CVE-2017-7889

high

Published 2017-04-17 · Modified 2026-05-13

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CVSS v3

7.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

7.8

Description

The mm subsystem in the Linux kernel through 3.2 does not properly enforce the CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM protection mechanism, which allows local users to read or write to kernel memory locations in the first megabyte (and bypass slab-allocation access restrictions) via an application that opens the /dev/mem file, related to arch/x86/mm/init.c and drivers/char/mem.c.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

75%

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	`3.2.91`

SUSE Affected 1 release

Version	Status	Fixed in
—	Affected	—

Ubuntu Affected 2 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
14.04	Affected	—
12.04	Affected	—

Debian Mixed 6 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`4.9.25-1`
sid	Fixed	`4.9.25-1`
forky	Fixed	`4.9.25-1`
bullseye	Fixed	`4.9.25-1`
bookworm	Fixed	`4.9.25-1`
8.0	Affected	—

References

CWEs

CWE-732

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

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