CVE-2016-4998

high

Published 2016-07-03 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

7.1

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

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.1

Description

The IPT_SO_SET_REPLACE setsockopt implementation in the netfilter subsystem in the Linux kernel before 4.6 allows local users to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) or possibly obtain sensitive information from kernel heap memory by leveraging in-container root access to provide a crafted offset value that leads to crossing a ruleset blob boundary.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

70%

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.

Metasploit modules

exploit_linux/local/netfilter_priv_esc_ipv4 rank 400

Linux Kernel 4.6.3 Netfilter Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	bookworm	fixed	`4.6.2-2`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`4.6.2-2`
debian	forky	fixed	`4.6.2-2`
debian	sid	fixed	`4.6.2-2`
debian	trixie	fixed	`4.6.2-2`
linux-kernel		affected
ubuntu	12.04	affected
ubuntu	14.04	affected
ubuntu	15.10	affected
ubuntu	16.04	affected

References

CWEs

CWE-119

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

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