CVE-2020-28974 Information disclosure in n/a

What is CVE-2020-28974?

CVE-2020-28974 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 20 Nov 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A slab-out-of-bounds read in fbcon in the Linux kernel before 5.9.7 could be used by local attackers to read privileged information or potentially crash the kernel, aka CID-3c4e0dff2095. This occurs because KD_FONT_OP_COPY in drivers/tty/vt/vt.c can be used for manipulations such as font height.

Weakness: CWE-125

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-28974?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2020-28974?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2020-28974 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-28974 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-2020-28974, GHSA-vqgg-ch69-x69v, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-28974, USN-4683-1.