Skip to content

CVE-2014-4171

mm/shmem.c in the Linux kernel through 3.15.1 does not properly implement the interaction between range notification and hole punching, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (i_mutex hold) by using the mmap system call to access a hole, as demonstrated by interfering with intended shmem activity by blocking completion of (1) an MADV_REMOVE madvise call or (2) an FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE fallocate call.

View on NVD

Severity

N/A

EPSS

Probability of exploitation (next 30 days): 0.0004 (0.0%)
Percentile: 13.0%
EPSS: 2026-05-06

Affects

linux:linux_kernelcanonical:ubuntu_linux

Technical description

mm/shmem.c in the Linux kernel through 3.15.1 does not properly implement the interaction between range notification and hole punching, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (i_mutex hold) by using the mmap system call to access a hole, as demonstrated by interfering with intended shmem activity by blocking completion of (1) an MADV_REMOVE madvise call or (2) an FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE fallocate call.

Published: 6/23/2014, 11:21:20 AM
Last modified: 5/6/2026, 10:30:45 PM

References

HomeEventsBlogResourcesTeam