CVE-2017-5972: Linux Kernel

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 23.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The TCP stack in the Linux kernel 3.x does not properly implement a SYN cookie protection mechanism for the case of a fast network connection, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) by sending many TCP SYN packets, as demonstrated by an attack against the kernel-3.10.0 package in CentOS Linux 7. NOTE: third parties have been unable to discern any relationship between the GitHub Engineering finding and the Trigemini.c attack code.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 3.0.0, up to and including 3.19.8

Published 2017-02-14. Last modified 2026-06-17.