CVE-2016-7916

medium

Published 2016-11-16 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

5.5

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

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

5.5

Description

Race condition in the environ_read function in fs/proc/base.c in the Linux kernel before 4.5.4 allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory by reading a /proc/*/environ file during a process-setup time interval in which environment-variable copying is incomplete.

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

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	bookworm	fixed	`4.5.4-1`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`4.5.4-1`
debian	forky	fixed	`4.5.4-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`4.5.4-1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`4.5.4-1`
linux-kernel		affected

References

CWEs

CWE-362

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

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