CVE-2016-6197: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

fs/overlayfs/dir.c in the OverlayFS filesystem implementation in the Linux kernel before 4.6 does not properly verify the upper dentry before proceeding with unlink and rename system-call processing, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) via a rename system call that specifies a self-hardlink.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: up to and including 4.5.7
• Oracle Linux: version 6 only
• Oracle Vm Server: version 3.4 only

Published 2016-08-06. Last modified 2026-06-17.