SARA / Free Tools / CVE / CVE-2017-2616

CVE-2017-2616 — A race condition was found in util-linux before 2

A race condition was found in util-linux before 2.32.1 in the way su handled the management of child processes. A local authenticated attacker could use this flaw to kill other processes with root privileges under specific conditions.

CVSS
5.5 MEDIUM
EPSS
0.06% (top 81.00%)
CWE
CWE-267
Published
2018-07-27T19:00:00.000Z
Last modified
2025-06-09T15:37:51.878Z
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

01What is this vulnerability?

A race condition was found in util-linux before 2.32.1 in the way su handled the management of child processes. A local authenticated attacker could use this flaw to kill other processes with root privileges under specific conditions.

02Affected products

VendorProductVersions
Linuxutillinux — 2.32.1

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

09References

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