What is CVE-2011-4097?

CVE-2011-4097 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Integer Overflow or Wraparound. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2012-05-17.

How severe is CVE-2011-4097?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.

Integer overflow in Linux Kernel

CVE-2011-4097

Integer overflow in the oom_badness function in mm/oom_kill.c in the Linux kernel before 3.1.8 on 64-bit platforms allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory consumption or process termination) by using a certain large amount of memory.

Vulnerability class: Integer Overflow

Published 2012-05-17 · last modified 2026-06-16.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.005 (36.8th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 37th percentile — 36.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Linux Kernel
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — versions 6.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-190 — Integer Overflow or Wraparound

References

www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/11/01/2 (mailing-list, Exploit, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Exploit, Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1.8 (Patch, Vendor Advisory)
github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/56c6a8a4aadca809e04276eabe5552935c51387f (Exploit, Patch, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2011-4097?: CVE-2011-4097 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Integer Overflow or Wraparound. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2012-05-17.
How severe is CVE-2011-4097?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.