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Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2016-10142

high Nessus Plugin ID 252010

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

 - An issue was discovered in the IPv6 protocol specification, related to ICMP Packet Too Big (PTB) messages.
 (The scope of this CVE is all affected IPv6 implementations from all vendors.) The security implications of IP fragmentation have been discussed at length in [RFC6274] and [RFC7739]. An attacker can leverage the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments to trigger the use of fragmentation in an arbitrary IPv6 flow (in scenarios in which actual fragmentation of packets is not needed) and can subsequently perform any type of fragmentation-based attack against legacy IPv6 nodes that do not implement [RFC6946]. That is, employing fragmentation where not actually needed allows for fragmentation-based attack vectors to be employed, unnecessarily. We note that, unfortunately, even nodes that already implement [RFC6946] can be subject to DoS attacks as a result of the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments. Let us assume that Host A is communicating with Host B and that, as a result of the widespread dropping of IPv6 packets that contain extension headers (including fragmentation) [RFC7872], some intermediate node filters fragments between Host B and Host A. If an attacker sends a forged ICMPv6 PTB error message to Host B, reporting an MTU smaller than 1280, this will trigger the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments from that moment on (as required by [RFC2460]). When Host B starts sending IPv6 atomic fragments (in response to the received ICMPv6 PTB error message), these packets will be dropped, since we previously noted that IPv6 packets with extension headers were being dropped between Host B and Host A. Thus, this situation will result in a DoS scenario. Another possible scenario is that in which two BGP peers are employing IPv6 transport and they implement Access Control Lists (ACLs) to drop IPv6 fragments (to avoid control-plane attacks). If the aforementioned BGP peers drop IPv6 fragments but still honor received ICMPv6 PTB error messages, an attacker could easily attack the corresponding peering session by simply sending an ICMPv6 PTB message with a reported MTU smaller than 1280 bytes. Once the attack packet has been sent, the aforementioned routers will themselves be the ones dropping their own traffic. (CVE-2016-10142)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-10142

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 252010

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2016_10142.nasl

Version: 1.3

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 8/19/2025

Updated: 9/30/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.2

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-10142

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.6

Temporal Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-6.11, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-riscv, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-edge, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-6.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gke, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-raspi-realtime, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-6.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-intel-iot-realtime, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-raspi2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gkeop, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-realtime, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde-5.15

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 1/14/2017

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-10142