CVE-2018-14634 — Red Hat
HIGHCVE-2018-14634 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-190 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-01-26) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-01-26. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-02-16.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2018-14634.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2018-14634 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
An integer overflow flaw was found in the Linux kernel's create_elf_tables() function. An unprivileged local user with access to SUID (or otherwise privileged) binary could use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the system. Kernel versions 2.6.x, 3.10.x and 4.14.x are believed to be vulnerable.
Affected Products
ubuntu linuxcanonicalbig-ip access policy managerf5big-ip advanced firewall managerf5big-ip analyticsf5big-ip application acceleration managerf5big-ip application security managerf5Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Linux Kernel 2.6.x / 3.10.x / 4.14.x (RedHat / Debian / CentOS) (x64) - 'Mutagen Astronomy' Local Privilege Escalation
by Qualys Corporation · Sep 26, 2018
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2018-14634 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
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.
This issue does not affect 32-bit systems as they do not have a large enough address space to exploit this flaw. Systems with less than 32GB of memory are very unlikely to be affected by this issue due to memory demands during exploitation. This issue does not affect the versions of Linux kernel as shipped with Red…
To mitigate the issue: Enable and install kernel-debuginfo packages as per https://access.redhat.com/solutions/666123 1) On the host, save the following in a file with the ".stp" extension: // CVE-2018-14634 // // Theory of operations: adjust the thread's # rlimit-in-effect around // calls to the vulnerable get_arg_page() function so as to encompass // the newly required _STK_LIM / 4 * 3 maximum. // Complication: the rlimit is stored in a current-> structure that // is shared across the threads of the process. They may concurrently // invoke this operation. function clamp_stack_rlim_cur:long () %{ struct rlimit *rlim = current->signal->rlim; unsigned long rlim_cur =…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2018-14634 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | kernel-0:2.6.32-754.6.3.el6 | RHSA-2018:2846 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:2.6.32-358.94.1.el6 | RHSA-2018:3643 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:2.6.32-431.93.2.el6 | RHSA-2018:2933 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:2.6.32-504.76.2.el6 | RHSA-2018:2924 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 Extended Update Support | kernel-0:2.6.32-573.65.2.el6 | RHSA-2018:2925 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | kernel-rt-0:3.10.0-862.14.4.rt56.821.el7 | RHSA-2018:2763 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | kernel-0:3.10.0-862.14.4.el7 | RHSA-2018:2748 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:3.10.0-327.76.1.el7 | RHSA-2018:3590 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-14634 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.