CVE-2020-25704 Denial of service in kernel

What is CVE-2020-25704?

CVE-2020-25704 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 2 Dec 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A flaw memory leak in the Linux kernel performance monitoring subsystem was found in the way if using PERF_EVENT_IOC_SET_FILTER. A local user could use this flaw to starve the resources causing denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-25704?

It affects 6 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel, Starwindsoftware Command Center, Starwindsoftware Starwind Hyperconverged Appliance, Starwindsoftware Starwind San \& Nas, Starwindsoftware Starwind Virtual San.

How do I fix CVE-2020-25704?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-25704 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-25704 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2020-25704, GHSA-wpcp-36gf-6gxq, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-25704, USN-4710-1.