CVE-2020-8649 Use after free in n/a

What is CVE-2020-8649?

CVE-2020-8649 is a medium-severity use after free vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 6 Feb 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

There is a use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel through 5.5.2 in the vgacon_invert_region function in drivers/video/console/vgacon.c.

Weakness: CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-8649?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel, Opensuse Leap.

How do I fix CVE-2020-8649?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2020-8649 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-8649 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-2020-8649, GHSA-3fg2-94qq-385g, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-8649.