CVE-2016-5363 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 Intended MAC-spoofing protection mechanism bypass
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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 MAC-spoofing protection mechanism and consequently cause a denial of service or intercept network traffic via (1) a crafted DHCP discovery message or (2) crafted non-IP traffic.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | neutron | all versions | 7.1.0pip install --upgrade 'neutron==7.1.0' |
| 🐍PyPI | neutron | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.1.0 | 8.1.0pip install --upgrade 'neutron==8.1.0' |
Affected Products
neutronopenstackDetection & 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 7.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-5363 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.
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-2016-5363 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.