CVE-2017-7518: Canonical Ubuntu Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel before version 4.12 in the way the KVM module processed the trap flag(TF) bit in EFLAGS during emulation of the syscall instruction, which leads to a debug exception(#DB) being raised in the guest stack. A user/process inside a guest could use this flaw to potentially escalate their privileges inside the guest. Linux guests are not affected by this.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 14.04 only; version 16.04 only
• Debian Debian Linux: version 8.0 only; version 9.0 only
• Linux Linux Kernel: before 4.12 (fixed in 4.12)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: version 7.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop: version 7.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server: version 7.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: version 7.4 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: version 7.4 only; version 7.5 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation: version 7.0 only

Published 2018-07-30. Last modified 2026-06-17.