CVE-2011-4609: Medium severity GNU glibc vulnerability

Published Dec 13, 2011
·
Updated

It was reported that if a process that called glibc's svcrun() exceeded the limit of opened files for a longer period of time, that accept() in rendezvousrequest()/svcudprecv() would fail with the EMFILE error, which would lead to looping between poll(), accept(), and 'for' loops which would consume a lot of CPU time. This could lead to an unresponsive system that requires human intervention (service restart or system restart) to resolve.

Other sources

The svcrun function in the RPC implementation in glibc before 2.15 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a large number of RPC connections.

MITRE

Affected Software

15 affected components
GNU glibc=2.1.2
GNU glibc=2.0.5
GNU glibc=2.0.6
GNU glibc=2.1.1
GNU glibc=2.0.3
GNU glibc=2.0
GNU glibc=2.13
GNU glibc=2.1.1.6
GNU glibc=2.1
GNU glibc=2.1.9
GNU glibc=2.0.1
GNU glibc=2.0.4
GNU glibc=2.0.2
GNU glibc=2.1.3
GNU glibc<=2.14

Event History

Dec 13, 2011
Data Sourced
06:34 PM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software
May 2, 2013
CVE Published
via MITRE·02:00 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·02:00 PM
Description

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2011-4609?

CVE-2011-4609 has a medium severity level due to the potential for denial-of-service conditions.

2

How do I fix CVE-2011-4609?

To fix CVE-2011-4609, ensure you upgrade to a patched version of glibc that addresses this vulnerability.

3

Which versions of glibc are affected by CVE-2011-4609?

CVE-2011-4609 affects multiple versions of glibc, including 2.0.0 through 2.1.9 and some versions up to 2.14.

4

What are the potential impacts of CVE-2011-4609?

The potential impacts of CVE-2011-4609 include application crashes and denial-of-service occurrences when file descriptor limits are exceeded.

5

Is CVE-2011-4609 still a concern for modern systems?

CVE-2011-4609 is less of a concern for modern systems that run updated versions of glibc, but it should still be monitored.

Contact

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