Vulnerability Monitor

The vendors, products, and vulnerabilities you care about

CVE-2016-6595

The SwarmKit toolkit 1.12.0 for Docker allows remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service (prevention of cluster joins) via a long sequence of join and quit actions. NOTE: the vendor disputes this issue, stating that this sequence is not "removing the state that is left by old nodes. At some point the manager obviously stops being able to accept new nodes, since it runs out of memory. Given that both for Docker swarm and for Docker Swarmkit nodes are *required* to provide a secret token (it's actually the only mode of operation), this means that no adversary can simply join nodes and exhaust manager resources. We can't do anything about a manager running out of memory and not being able to add new legitimate nodes to the system. This is merely a resource provisioning issue, and definitely not a CVE worthy vulnerability.

Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 6.5, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction requiring only low-level privileges . The vulnerability impacts and availability (service disruption) for affected systems. Impacting 1 product from docker organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

First disclosed in 2017, this vulnerability was reported during a period defined by widespread IoT adoption challenges, mobile security concerns, and the emergence of advanced persistent threat (APT) techniques. Contemporary mitigation strategies focused on secure development practices and third-party component vetting.

Published

2017-01-04T20:59:00.247

Last Modified

2025-04-12T10:46:40.837

Status

Deferred

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.0: 6.5 (MEDIUM)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:P

Access Vector: NETWORK
Access Complexity: LOW
Authentication: SINGLE
Confidentiality Impact: NONE
Integrity Impact: NONE
Availability Impact: PARTIAL

Exploitability Score

8.0

Impact Score

2.9

Weaknesses

Type: Primary
CWE-399

Affected Vendors & Products

Type	Vendor	Product	Version/Range	Vulnerable?
Application	docker	docker	1.12.0	Yes

References

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/04/1 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/02/1 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/02/8 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/92195 ([email protected])
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036548 ([email protected])
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/04/1 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/02/1 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/02/8 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/92195 (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036548 (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For docker's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.