Threat Intelligence / CVE / CVE-2016-5195

CVE-2016-5195 — Linux Kernel

CISA KEVRansomware
CVSS v3.1 7 (HIGH) · EPSS 93.9% (higher than 99.8% of all scored CVEs) · Priority 10/10 · Published 2016-11-10

As of 2025-11-04, CVE-2016-5195 is a HIGH-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, CVSS v3.1 7, EPSS 93.9% (99.8th percentile). It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03), with a US federal remediation deadline of 2022-03-24, and CISA links it to known ransomware campaigns. Threadlinqs Intelligence links 1 tracked threat campaign to CVE-2016-5195, most recently “SHADOW-AETHER-040 & SHADOW-AETHER-064 — Agentic AI-Driven Intrusion Campaigns Targeting LATAM Government and Financial Sectors (Vibe Hacking)”.

Last updated: 2025-11-04

What is CVE-2016-5195?

Race condition in mm/gup.c in the Linux kernel 2.x through 4.x before 4.8.3 allows local users to gain privileges by leveraging incorrect handling of a copy-on-write (COW) feature to write to a read-only memory mapping, as exploited in the wild in October 2016, aka "Dirty COW."

The record classifies CVE-2016-5195 under weakness class CWE-362. Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw requires local access to the host, needs low-privilege credentials, needs no user interaction, and has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability. 10 affected-product entries are recorded, across 6 vendors, listed below. The identifier was first published 3594 days ago.

Severity and exploitation probability

CVSS v3.1 base score
7 — HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS (FIRST)
93.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.8% of all scored CVEs
CISA KEV
Listed since 2022-03-03, federal remediation deadline 2022-03-24 — used in known ransomware campaigns
Threadlinqs priority
10/10 — CISA lists it as used in ransomware, which Threadlinqs scores at the maximum
Published
2016-11-10, last modified 2025-11-04

Is CVE-2016-5195 being exploited?

CISA added CVE-2016-5195 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03, which means the agency holds evidence of exploitation in the wild; US federal civilian agencies had to remediate it by 2022-03-24 under BOD 22-01. CISA flags the vulnerability as one used in known ransomware campaigns. It currently carries a trending score of 40 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.

Affected products and versions

How to fix CVE-2016-5195

The record marks a vendor fix as available for CVE-2016-5195. Patch reference: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/19be0eaffa3ac7d8eb6784ad9bdbc7d67ed8e619. Vendor advisory: http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=19be0eaffa3ac7d8eb6784ad9bdbc7d67ed8e619. Because CVE-2016-5195 is KEV-listed, US federal civilian agencies were required to apply the vendor fix, or stop using the product, by 2022-03-24. Apply the vendor fix referenced above to every affected product listed in this record, then confirm the running version against the vendor advisory.

Threat activity tracking CVE-2016-5195

1 tracked threat in the Threadlinqs corpus references CVE-2016-5195, either in the campaign’s CVE list or as an indicator on the campaign record.

Sources

Seeded from cveorg and not yet processed by the Threadlinqs enrichment pipeline, so blank CVSS, EPSS or KEV fields above mean NOT MEASURED rather than measured-absent.

Full detection coverage & IOCs for threats exploiting CVE-2016-5195 are available via the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier). View plans →

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