CVE-2016-5362 — neutron
HIGHCVE-2016-5362 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) CWE-254 vulnerability in neutron. A fix is available for neutron — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenStack Neutron allows remote attackers to bypass an intended DHCP-spoofing protection mechanism
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-5362 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
neutron🐍neutronReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The IPTables firewall in OpenStack Neutron before 7.0.4 and 8.0.0 through 8.1.0 allows remote attackers to bypass an intended DHCP-spoofing protection mechanism and consequently cause a denial of service or intercept network traffic via a crafted DHCP discovery message.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | neutron | all versions | 7.0.5pip install --upgrade 'neutron==7.0.5' |
| 🐍PyPI | neutron | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.1.1 | 8.1.1pip install --upgrade 'neutron==8.1.1' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for neutron, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update neutron to 7.0.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-5362 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2016-5362 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2016-5362. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7.0 (Kilo) for RHEL 7 | openstack-neutron-0:2015.1.4-2.el7ost | RHSA-2016:1474 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8.0 (Liberty) | openstack-neutron-1:7.0.4-11.el7ost | RHSA-2016:1473 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-5362 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2016-5362 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.