CVE-2021-3491

medium
Published — · Modified —
CVSS v3
CVSS v4 NEW
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
5.5

Description

The io_uring subsystem in the Linux kernel allowed the MAX_RW_COUNT limit to be bypassed in the PROVIDE_BUFFERS operation, which led to negative values being usedin mem_rw when reading /proc/<PID>/mem. This could be used to create a heap overflow leading to arbitrary code execution in the kernel. It was addressed via commit d1f82808877b ("io_uring: truncate lengths larger than MAX_RW_COUNT on provide buffers") (v5.13-rc1) and backported to the stable kernels in v5.12.4, v5.11.21, and v5.10.37. It was introduced in ddf0322db79c ("io_uring: add IORING_OP_PROVIDE_BUFFERS") (v5.7-rc1).

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
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

suse SUSE Affected 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
Affected
arch Arch Fixed 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
Fixed 5.10.37-1
debian Debian Fixed 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Fixed 5.10.38-1
sid Fixed 5.10.38-1
forky Fixed 5.10.38-1
bullseye Fixed 5.10.38-1
bookworm Fixed 5.10.38-1

References

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

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