The sys_set_mempolicy function in mempolicy.c in Linux kernel 2.6.x allows local users to cause a denial of service (kernel BUG()) via a negative first argument.

Several local and remote vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service or the execution of arbitrary code. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CVE-2004-1017     Multiple overflows exist in the io_edgeport driver which     might be usable as a denial of service attack vector.

  - CVE-2005-0124     Bryan Fulton reported a bounds checking bug in the     coda_pioctl function which may allow local users to     execute arbitrary code or trigger a denial of service     attack.

  - CVE-2005-0449     An error in the skb_checksum_help() function from the     netfilter framework has been discovered that allows the     bypass of packet filter rules or a denial of service     attack.

  - CVE-2005-2457     Tim Yamin discovered that insufficient input validation     in the zisofs driver for compressed ISO file systems     allows a denial of service attack through maliciously     crafted ISO images.

  - CVE-2005-2490     A buffer overflow in the sendmsg() function allows local     users to execute arbitrary code.

  - CVE-2005-2555     Herbert Xu discovered that the setsockopt() function was     not restricted to users/processes with the CAP_NET_ADMIN     capability. This allows attackers to manipulate IPSEC     policies or initiate a denial of service attack. 

  - CVE-2005-2709     Al Viro discovered a race condition in the /proc     handling of network devices. A (local) attacker could     exploit the stale reference after interface shutdown to     cause a denial of service or possibly execute code in     kernel mode.

  - CVE-2005-2800     Jan Blunck discovered that repeated failed reads of     /proc/scsi/sg/devices leak memory, which allows a denial     of service attack.

  - CVE-2005-2973     Tetsuo Handa discovered that the udp_v6_get_port()     function from the IPv6 code can be forced into an     endless loop, which allows a denial of service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3044     Vasiliy Averin discovered that the reference counters     from sockfd_put() and fput() can be forced into     overlapping, which allows a denial of service attack     through a NULL pointer dereference.

  - CVE-2005-3053     Eric Dumazet discovered that the set_mempolicy() system     call accepts a negative value for its first argument,     which triggers a BUG() assert. This allows a denial of     service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3055     Harald Welte discovered that if a process issues a USB     Request Block (URB) to a device and terminates before     the URB completes, a stale pointer would be     dereferenced. This could be used to trigger a denial of     service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3180     Pavel Roskin discovered that the driver for Orinoco     wireless cards clears its buffers insufficiently. This     could leak sensitive information into user space.

  - CVE-2005-3181     Robert Derr discovered that the audit subsystem uses an     incorrect function to free memory, which allows a denial     of service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3257     Rudolf Polzer discovered that the kernel improperly     restricts access to the KDSKBSENT ioctl, which can     possibly lead to privilege escalation.

  - CVE-2005-3356     Doug Chapman discovered that the mq_open syscall can be     tricked into decrementing an internal counter twice,     which allows a denial of service attack through a kernel     panic.

  - CVE-2005-3358     Doug Chapman discovered that passing a zero bitmask to     the set_mempolicy() system call leads to a kernel panic,     which allows a denial of service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3783     The ptrace code using CLONE_THREAD didn't use the thread     group ID to determine whether the caller is attaching to     itself, which allows a denial of service attack.

  - CVE-2005-3784     The auto-reaping of child processes functionality     included ptraced-attached processes, which allows denial     of service through dangling references.

  - CVE-2005-3806     Yen Zheng discovered that the IPv6 flow label code     modified an incorrect variable, which could lead to     memory corruption and denial of service.

  - CVE-2005-3847     It was discovered that a threaded real-time process,     which is currently dumping core can be forced into a     dead-lock situation by sending it a SIGKILL signal,     which allows a denial of service attack. 

  - CVE-2005-3848     Ollie Wild discovered a memory leak in the     icmp_push_reply() function, which allows denial of     service through memory consumption.

  - CVE-2005-3857     Chris Wright discovered that excessive allocation of     broken file lock leases in the VFS layer can exhaust     memory and fill up the system logging, which allows     denial of service.

  - CVE-2005-3858     Patrick McHardy discovered a memory leak in the     ip6_input_finish() function from the IPv6 code, which     allows denial of service.

  - CVE-2005-4605     Karl Janmar discovered that a signedness error in the     procfs code can be exploited to read kernel memory,     which may disclose sensitive information.

  - CVE-2005-4618     Yi Ying discovered that sysctl does not properly enforce     the size of a buffer, which allows a denial of service     attack.

  - CVE-2006-0095     Stefan Rompf discovered that dm_crypt does not clear an     internal struct before freeing it, which might disclose     sensitive information.

  - CVE-2006-0096     It was discovered that the SDLA driver's capability     checks were too lax for firmware upgrades.

  - CVE-2006-0482     Ludovic Courtes discovered that get_compat_timespec()     performs insufficient input sanitizing, which allows a     local denial of service attack.

  - CVE-2006-1066     It was discovered that ptrace() on the ia64 architecture     allows a local denial of service attack, when preemption     is enabled.

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and a page attribute mapping bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The Linux kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system.

An issue was discovered that affects how page attributes are changed by the kernel. Video drivers, which sometimes map kernel pages with a different caching policy than write-back, are now expected to function correctly. This change affects the x86, AMD64, and Intel EM64T architectures.

In addition the following security bugs were fixed :

The set_mempolicy system call did not check for negative numbers in the policy field. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service (system panic). (CVE-2005-3053)

A flaw in ioremap handling on AMD 64 and Intel EM64T systems. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service or minor information leak. (CVE-2005-3108)

A race condition in the ebtables netfilter module. On a SMP system that is operating under a heavy load this flaw may allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash). (CVE-2005-3110)

A memory leak was found in key handling. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2005-3119)

A flaw in the Orinoco wireless driver. On systems running the vulnerable drive, a remote attacker could send carefully crafted packets which would divulge the contents of uninitialized kernel memory. (CVE-2005-3180)

A memory leak was found in the audit system. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2005-3181)

All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade their kernels to the packages associated with their machine architectures and configurations as listed in this erratum.

A Denial of Service vulnerability was discovered in the sys_set_mempolicy() function. By calling the function with a negative first argument, a local attacker could cause a kernel crash.
(CAN-2005-3053)

A race condition was discovered in the handling of shared memory mappings with CLONE_VM. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a deadlock (Denial of Service) by triggering a core dump while waiting for a thread which had just performed an exec() system call.
(CAN-2005-3106)

A race condition was found in the handling of traced processes. When one thread was tracing another thread that shared the same memory map, a local attacker could trigger a deadlock (Denial of Service) by forcing a core dump when the traced thread was in the TASK_TRACED state. (CAN-2005-3107)

A vulnerability has been found in the 'ioremap' module. By performing certain IO mapping operations, a local attacker could either read memory pages he has not normally access to (information leak) or cause a kernel crash (Denial of Service). This only affects the amd64 platform. (CAN-2005-3108)

The HFS and HFS+ file system drivers did not properly verify that the file system that was attempted to be mounted really was HFS/HFS+. On machines which allow users to mount arbitrary removable devices as HFS or HFS+ with an /etc/fstab entry, this could be exploited to trigger a kernel crash. (CAN-2005-3109)

Steve Herrel discovered a race condition in the 'ebtables' netfilter module. A remote attacker could exploit this by sending specially crafted packets that caused a value to be modified after it had been read but before it had been locked. This eventually lead to a kernel crash. This only affects multiprocessor machines (SMP).
(CAN-2005-3110)

Robert Derr discovered a memory leak in the system call auditing code.
On a kernel which has the CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL option enabled, this leads to memory exhaustion and eventually a Denial of Service. A local attacker could also speed this up by excessively calling system calls.
This only affects customized kernels built from the kernel source packages. The standard Ubuntu kernel does not have the CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL option enabled, and is therefore not affected by this.
(http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=co mmitdiff;h=829841146878e082613a49581ae252c071057c23).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Linux 2.6 kernel have been discovered and corrected in this update :

An integer overflow in vc_resize (CVE-2004-1333).

A race condition in the sysfs_read_file and sysfs_write_file functions in 2.6.10 and earlier allows local users to read kernel memory and cause a DoS (crash) via large offsets in sysfs files (CVE-2004-2302).

An integer signedness error in scsi_ioctl.c (CVE-2005-0180).

Netfilter allows a local user to cause a DoS (memory consumption) via certain packet fragments that are reassembled twice, which causes a data structure to be allocated twice (CVE-2005-0210).

A DoS in pkt_ioctl in pktcdvc.c (CVE-2005-1589).

An array index overflow in the xfrm_sk_policy_insert function in xfrm_user.c allows local users to cause a DoS (oops or deadlock) and possibly execute arbitrary code (CVE-2005-2456).

The zisofs driver in versions prior to 2.6.12.5 allows local users and remove attackers to cause a DoS (crash) via a crafted compressed ISO filesystem (CVE-2005-2457).

inflate.c in the zlib routines in versions prior to 2.6.12.5 allow remove attackers to cause a DoS (crash) via a compressed file with 'improper tables' (CVE-2005-2458).

The huft_build function in inflate.c in the zlib routines in versions prior to 2.6.12.5 returns the wrong value, allowing remote attackers to cause a DoS (crash) via a certain compressed file that leads to a NULL pointer dereference (CVE-2005-2459).

A stack-based buffer overflow in the sendmsg function call in versions prior to 2.6.13.1 allow local users to execute arbitrary code by calling sendmsg and modifying the message contents in another thread (CVE-2005-2490).

vlan_dev.c in version 2.6.8 allows remote attackers to cause a DoS (oops from null dereference) via certain UDP packets that lead to a function call with the wrong argument (CVE-2005-2548).

The kernel does not properly restrict socket policy access to users with the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability, which could allow local users to conduct unauthorized activities via ipv4/ip_sockglue.c and ipv6/ipv6_sockglue.c (CVE-2005-2555).

A memory leak in the seq_file implementation in the SCSI procfs interface (sg.c) in 2.6.13 and earlier allows a local user to cause a DoS (memory consumption) via certain repeated reads from /proc/scsi/gs/devices file which is not properly handled when the next() interator returns NULL or an error (CVE-2005-2800).

xattr.c in the ext2 and ext3 file system code does not properly compare the name_index fields when sharing xattr blocks which could prevent ACLs from being applied (CVE-2005-2801).

The ipt_recent module in versions prior to 2.6.12 when running on 64bit processors allows remote attackers to cause a DoS (kernel panic) via certain attacks such as SSH brute force (CVE-2005-2872).

The ipt_recent module in versions prior to 2.6.12 does not properly perform certain tests when the jiffies value is greater than LONG_MAX, which can cause ipt_recent netfilter rules to block too early (CVE-2005-2873).

Multiple vulnerabilities in versions prior to 2.6.13.2 allow local users to cause a DoS (oops from null dereference) via fput in a 32bit ioctl on 64-bit x86 systems or sockfd_put in the 32-bit routing_ioctl function on 64-bit systems (CVE-2005-3044).

The sys_set_mempolicy function in mempolicy.c allows local users to cause a DoS via a negative first argument (CVE-2005-3053).

Versions 2.6.8 to 2.6.14-rc2 allow local users to cause a DoS (oops) via a userspace process that issues a USB Request Block (URB) to a USB device and terminates before the URB is finished, which leads to a stale pointer reference (CVE-2005-3055).

The Orinoco driver in 2.6.13 and earlier does not properly clear memory from a previously used packet whose length is increased, allowing remote attackers to obtain sensitive information (CVE-2005-3180).

Kernels 2.6.13 and earlier, when CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL is enabled, use an incorrect function to free names_cache memory, preventing the memory from being tracked by AUDITSYSCALL code and leading to a memory leak (CVE-2005-3181).

The VT implementation in version 2.6.12 allows local users to use certain IOCTLs on terminals of other users and gain privileges (CVE-2005-3257).

Exec does not properly clear posix-timers in multi-threaded environments, which result in a resource leak and could allow a large number of multiple local users to cause a DoS by using more posix- timers than specified by the quota for a single user (CVE-2005-3271).

The rose_rt_ioctl function rose_route.c in versions prior to 2.6.12 does not properly verify the ndigis argument for a new route, allowing an attacker to trigger array out-of-bounds errors with a large number of digipeats (CVE-2005-3273).

A race condition in ip_vs_conn_flush in versions prior to 2.6.13, when running on SMP systems, allows local users to cause a DoS (null dereference) by causing a connection timer to expire while the connection table is being flushed before the appropriate lock is acquired (CVE-2005-3274).

The NAT code in versions prior to 2.6.13 incorrectly declares a variable to be static, allowing remote attackers to cause a DoS (memory corruption) by causing two packets for the same protocol to be NATed at the same time (CVE-2005-3275).

The sys_get_thread_area function in process.c in versions prior to 2.6.12.4 and 2.6.13 does not clear a data structure before copying it to userspace, which may allow a user process to obtain sensitive information (CVE-2005-3276).

The following non-security fixes are also applied :

Driver updates were made to the aic97xx and sata_sil modules.

Support was added for ATI ipx400 chipsets, for IDE and sound.

A build problem with icecream on the x86_64 platform was fixed.

The pin1 APIC timer on RS480-based motherboards was disabled.

The provided packages are patched to fix these vulnerabilities. All users are encouraged to upgrade to these updated kernels.

To update your kernel, please follow the directions located at :

http://www.mandriva.com/en/security/kernelupdate

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2005:808 advisory.

  - security flaw (CVE-2005-3053, CVE-2005-3108, CVE-2005-3110, CVE-2005-3119, CVE-2005-3180, CVE-2005-3181)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The remote CentOS system is missing a security update which has been documented in Red Hat advisory RHSA-2005-808.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
22559	Debian DSA-1017-1 : kernel-source-2.6.8 - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
21967	CentOS 4 : kernel (CESA-2005:808)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	medium
20613	Ubuntu 4.10 / 5.04 : linux-source-2.6.10, linux-source-2.6.8.1 vulnerabilities (USN-199-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	low
20450	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : kernel (MDKSA-2005:219)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	high
20104	RHEL 4 : kernel (RHSA-2005:808)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	medium
801412	CentOS RHSA-2005-808 Security Check	Log Correlation Engine	Generic	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2005-3053

medium

Tenable Plugins

critical

medium

low

high

medium

high