CVE-2019-8980: Canonical Ubuntu Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 5.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A memory leak in the kernel_read_file function in fs/exec.c in the Linux kernel through 4.20.11 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by triggering vfs_read failures.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 14.04 only; version 16.04 only; version 18.04 only; version 18.10 only
• Debian Debian Linux: version 8.0 only
• Linux Linux Kernel: from 4.7, before 4.9.163 (fixed in 4.9.163); from 4.14, before 4.14.106 (fixed in 4.14.106); from 4.19, before 4.19.28 (fixed in 4.19.28); from 4.20, before 4.20.15 (fixed in 4.20.15); from 5.0, before 5.0.1 (fixed in 5.0.1); version 5.1 only
• Opensuse Leap: version 15.0 only

Published 2019-02-21. Last modified 2026-06-17.