CVE-2010-4655: Canonical Ubuntu Linux

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

net/core/ethtool.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.36 does not initialize certain data structures, which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel heap memory by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability for an ethtool ioctl call.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 8.04 only
• Linux Linux Kernel: before 2.6.36 (fixed in 2.6.36)
• VMware Esx: version 4.0 only; version 4.1 only

Published 2011-07-18. Last modified 2026-06-16.