A buffer overflow was discovered in the GNU C Library's dynamic loader ld.so while processing the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable. This issue could allow a local attacker to use maliciously crafted GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variables when launching binaries with SUID permission to execute code with elevated privileges.
CVE-2023-4911
Score elevated to 9.0 because this CVE is listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2023-11-21), indicating real-world exploitation has been confirmed by US federal agencies. the CNA's CVSS baseline 7.8 retained for reference (NVD's own analysis pending). Confidence: HIGH.
- Actively exploited in the wild (CISA-KEV)
A fix is available — apply it.
- CVSS v3
- 7.8
- EG Score
- 9.0(high)
- EG Risk
- 81(Attend)EG Risk 81/100SSVC: Attend
EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).
How it’s computedSeverity90% × 45%Exploitation100% × 40%Automatability0% × 15%Action: Remediate soon — notable exploitation risk. - EPSS
- 99.6%
- KEV
- ⚠ Exploited
Published
October 3, 2023
Last Modified
July 14, 2026
Advisory Details (9)
Auto-updated May 12, 2026CVE-2023-4911: Local Privilege Escalation in glibc’s ld.so | Qualys
https://www.qualys.com/cve-2023-4911/2238352 – (CVE-2023-4911) CVE-2023-4911 glibc: buffer overflow in ld.so leading to privilege escalation
Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Extended Update Support
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2238352Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:0033Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Extended Update Support.
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5476Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5455Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Extended Update Support.
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5454Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5453Vendor Advisories for CVE-2023-4911(1)
These vendors published their own advisory mentioning this CVE — often with vendor-specific remediation steps + affected product lists not in NVD.
Patch Availability(6)
| Vendor / Ecosystem | Fixed in / Patch | Released | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ubuntu | nscd (2.37-0ubuntu2.1) @ lunar | 2026-07-22 | ubuntu |
| redhat | redhat-virtualization-host-0:4.5.3-202312060823_8.6 | 2024-01-03 | redhat |
| redhat | glibc-0:2.28-225.el8_8.6 | 2023-10-05 | redhat |
| redhat | glibc-0:2.28-189.6.el8_6 | 2023-10-05 | redhat |
| redhat | glibc-0:2.34-60.el9_2.7 | 2023-10-05 | redhat |
| redhat | glibc-0:2.34-28.el9_0.4 | 2023-10-05 | redhat |
Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.
Weakness Classification(2)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Additional Vendor Advisories
(6)
Vendors that published advisories for this CVE beyond the curated set above. Broader coverage but minimal per-row detail — click through for the original advisory.
- Red HatRHSA-2023:5453IMPORTANT2023-10-03
RHSA-2023:5453 — Important
- Red HatRHSA-2023:5454IMPORTANT2023-10-03
RHSA-2023:5454 — Important
- Red HatRHSA-2023:5455IMPORTANT2023-10-03
RHSA-2023:5455 — Important
- Red HatRHSA-2023:5476IMPORTANT2023-10-03
RHSA-2023:5476 — Important
- Red HatRHSA-2024:0033IMPORTANT2023-10-03
RHSA-2024:0033 — Important
- UbuntuUSN-6409-1HIGH
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 0× in last 7d / 0× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
- 2026-07-23 02:28 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 22:02 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 22:02 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 22:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-22 19:40 UTCCISA KEV update
- 2026-07-22 17:55 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 17:55 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 17:55 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-22 14:06 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-22 13:47 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 13:47 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-22 09:41 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 09:41 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-22 05:36 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 05:36 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-22 01:29 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-22 01:28 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 21:22 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-21 21:21 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 17:12 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-21 17:11 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 14:37 UTCCISA KEV update
- 2026-07-21 13:05 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-21 13:05 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 09:00 UTCVendor advisory
Show 75 moreShow fewer
- 2026-07-21 08:59 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 04:52 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-21 04:52 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-21 00:47 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-21 00:47 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 20:41 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-20 20:41 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 20:41 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 17:06 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-20 16:35 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 16:34 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 12:28 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 12:28 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 08:21 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 08:21 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 04:16 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 04:16 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-20 00:10 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-20 00:10 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-19 20:03 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-19 20:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-19 15:57 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-19 15:57 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-19 11:51 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-19 11:51 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-19 07:45 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-19 07:45 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-19 03:39 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-19 03:39 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 23:32 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 23:32 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 19:26 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 19:26 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 15:20 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 15:20 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 11:14 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 11:14 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 07:08 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 07:08 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-18 03:02 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-18 03:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 22:57 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 22:57 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 18:51 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 18:51 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 14:45 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 14:45 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 10:38 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-17 10:38 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 10:38 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 06:32 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 06:32 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-17 02:26 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-17 02:26 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 22:21 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 22:20 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 18:14 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 18:14 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 17:04 UTCCISA KEV update
- 2026-07-16 17:01 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-16 14:08 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 14:08 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 10:02 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 10:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 05:56 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 05:56 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-16 01:51 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-16 01:51 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-15 21:45 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-15 21:45 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-15 17:38 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-07-15 17:38 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-07-15 16:56 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-15 16:56 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-15 16:49 UTCCISA KEV update
Publicly available exploits
(10 references)Working exploit code is in the public domain (9 GitHub PoCs) (1 Exploit-DB entry). Defenders should treat patch urgency accordingly — public PoCs typically lead to mass-exploitation within 24-72 hours.
- Exploit-DBEDB-52479First seen Feb 11, 2026
glibc 2.38 - Buffer Overflow
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCNishanthAnand21/CVE-2023-4911-PoCFirst seen Jan 20, 2024
Repository containing a Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstrating the impact of CVE-2023-4911, a vulnerability in glibc's ld.so dynamic loader, exposing risks related to Looney Tunables.
Open source ↗ - Open source ↗GitHub PoCpuckiestyle/CVE-2023-4911First seen Dec 23, 2023
- GitHub PoCDiego-AltF4/CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 28, 2023
Proof of concept for CVE-2023-4911 (Looney Tunables) discovered by Qualys Threat Research Unit
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCKernelKrise/CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 25, 2023
Looney Tunables Local privilege escalation (CVE-2023-4911) workshop
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCchaudharyarjun/LooneyPwnerFirst seen Oct 17, 2023
Exploit tool for CVE-2023-4911, targeting the 'Looney Tunables' glibc vulnerability in various Linux distributions.
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCruycr4ft/CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 11, 2023
CVE-2023-4911
Open source ↗ - Open source ↗GitHub PoChadrian3689/looney-tunables-CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 10, 2023
- GitHub PoCleesh3288/CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 4, 2023
PoC for CVE-2023-4911
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCRickdeJager/CVE-2023-4911First seen Oct 4, 2023
CVE-2023-4911 proof of concept
Open source ↗
Frequently asked(6)
What is CVE-2023-4911?
When was CVE-2023-4911 disclosed?
Is CVE-2023-4911 actively exploited?
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2023-4911?
Which products are affected by CVE-2023-4911?
How do I remediate CVE-2023-4911?
Dependency Blast Radius
Explore the affected products and dependency analysis for CVE-2023-4911
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