CVE-2016-4558

high

Published 2016-05-23 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

7.0

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

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.0

Description

The BPF subsystem in the Linux kernel before 4.5.5 mishandles reference counts, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (use-after-free) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted application on (1) a system with more than 32 Gb of memory, related to the program reference count or (2) a 1 Tb system, related to the map reference count.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

69%

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.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-39773 dos linux verified

Google Security Research · 2016-05-04

Linux Kernel (Ubuntu 16.04) - Reference Count Overflow Using BPF Maps

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	bookworm	fixed	`4.5.3-1`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`4.5.3-1`
debian	forky	fixed	`4.5.3-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`4.5.3-1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`4.5.3-1`
ubuntu	14.04	affected
ubuntu	16.04	affected
linux-kernel		affected	`4.4.11`

References

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

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