What is CVE-2014-7970?

CVE-2014-7970 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2014-10-13.

How severe is CVE-2014-7970?

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

Resource exhaustion in Linux Kernel

CVE-2014-7970

The pivot_root implementation in fs/namespace.c in the Linux kernel through 3.17 does not properly interact with certain locations of a chroot directory, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (mount-tree loop) via . (dot) values in both arguments to the pivot_root system call.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published 2014-10-13 · last modified 2026-06-17.

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: 0.007 (50.2th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 50th percentile — 50.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.007 · newest: 0.007 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Linux Kernel
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server — versions 11.0
Canonical Ubuntu Linux — versions 12.04, 14.04

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2015-04/msg00015.html (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/70319 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/ (Patch, Mailing List, Vendor Advisory)
www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2419-1 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2514-1 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
secunia.com/advisories/60174 (Broken Link, third-party-advisory)
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/10/08/21 (mailing-list, Patch, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2420-1 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2077 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2014-7970?: CVE-2014-7970 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2014-10-13.
How severe is CVE-2014-7970?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.