CVE-2016-2550

medium

Published 2016-04-27 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

5.5

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

5.5

Description

The Linux kernel before 4.5 allows local users to bypass file-descriptor limits and cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by leveraging incorrect tracking of descriptor ownership and sending each descriptor over a UNIX socket before closing it. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2013-4312.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

55%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

Linux kernel Affected 1 release

Version	Status	Fixed in
—	Affected	—

Debian Fixed 5 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`4.4.4-1`
sid	Fixed	`4.4.4-1`
forky	Fixed	`4.4.4-1`
bullseye	Fixed	`4.4.4-1`
bookworm	Fixed	`4.4.4-1`

References

CWEs

CWE-399

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.