CVE-2017-1000255
On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel…
- 5.5MediumCVSS base score
- 0.38%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 67% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel will take an exception (interrupt), and use the r1 value *from the signal frame* as the kernel stack pointer. As part of the exception entry the content of the signal frame is written to the kernel stack, allowing an attacker to overwrite arbitrary locations with arbitrary values. The exception handling does produce an oops, and a panic if panic_on_oops=1, but only after kernel memory has been over written. This flaw was introduced in commit: "5d176f751ee3 (powerpc: tm: Enable transactional memory (TM) lazily for userspace)" which was merged upstream into v4.9-rc1. Please note that kernels built with CONFIG_PPC_TRANSACTIONAL_MEM=n are not vulnerable.
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
- 24 days later
· 24 days later
Published
- 7 years later
· 7 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.0 | Medium5.5 | CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.38% · top 67% of all CVEs (11 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.5.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
References3
- RHSA-2018:0654 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHATx_transferred
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2017-1000255 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- 101264 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2017-1516 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2017-1000255)Record last updated .