Reference page — cumulative record through Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.

CVE-2019-20794

CVE-2019-20794MEDIUM

n/a n/a — An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel 4.18 through 5.6.11 when unprivileged user namespaces are allowed.

  AV  AC  PR  UI  S  C  I  A   CVSS    EPSS   %ile   KEV
   L   H   L   N  U  N  N  H    4.7   .0051   42.4     —

AFFECTED
  Product  Versions  Fixed
  n/a      n/a –     —

TIMELINE
  May 9   Reserved by mitre
  May 9   Published (CNA: mitre)
  Oct 8   ENRICHED — CVE-2019-20794. Received CVSS 4.7 and CPE data from NVD.
  Oct 8   EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2019-20794. Public exploit reference added.

CWE-772 · CNA: mitre · CVSS v3.1 · 4 references · NVD status: Modified

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel 4.18 through 5.6.11 when unprivileged user namespaces are allowed. A user can create their own PID namespace, and mount a FUSE filesystem. Upon interaction with this FUSE filesystem, if the userspace component is terminated via a kill of the PID namespace's pid 1, it will result in a hung task, and resources being permanently locked up until system reboot. This can result in resource exhaustion.

Lifecycle

Complete event history — 4 events, chronological
Date	Event	Detail
May 9, 2020	Reserved	Reserved by mitre
May 9, 2020	Published	Published (CNA: mitre)
October 8, 2026	ENRICHED	ENRICHED — CVE-2019-20794. Received CVSS 4.7 and CPE data from NVD.
October 8, 2026	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2019-20794. Public exploit reference added.

Affected

Affected products and packages — 1 row
Vendor	Product / Package	Ecosystem	Version introduced	Fixed
n/a	n/a	—	n/a	—

Weaknesses

CWE-772

References (4)

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/08/24/1 [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
https://github.com/sargun/fuse-example [Exploit, Third Party Advisory]
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20200608-0001/ [Third Party Advisory]
https://sourceforge.net/p/fuse/mailman/message/36598753/ [Exploit, Third Party Advisory]

Authoritative record: CVE-2019-20794 at cve.org

Weaknesses: CWE-772

About this page

This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2019-20794 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.