The kill_something_info function in kernel/signal.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.28 does not consider PID namespaces when processing signals directed to PID -1, which allows local users to bypass the intended namespace isolation, and send arbitrary signals to all processes in all namespaces, via a kill command.

Igor Zhbanov discovered that NFS clients were able to create device nodes even when root_squash was enabled. An authenticated remote attacker could create device nodes with open permissions, leading to a loss of privacy or escalation of privileges. Only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were affected. (CVE-2009-1072)

Dan Carpenter discovered that SELinux did not correctly handle certain network checks when running with compat_net=1. A local attacker could exploit this to bypass network checks. Default Ubuntu installations do not enable SELinux, and only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were affected.
(CVE-2009-1184)

Shaohua Li discovered that memory was not correctly initialized in the AGP subsystem. A local attacker could potentially read kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-1192)

Benjamin Gilbert discovered that the VMX implementation of KVM did not correctly handle certain registers. An attacker in a guest VM could exploit this to cause a host system crash, leading to a denial of service. This only affected 32bit hosts. Ubuntu 6.06 was not affected.
(CVE-2009-1242)

Thomas Pollet discovered that the Amateur Radio X.25 Packet Layer Protocol did not correctly validate certain fields. A remote attacker could exploit this to read kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-1265)

Trond Myklebust discovered that NFS did not correctly handle certain long filenames. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. Only Ubuntu 6.06 was affected. (CVE-2009-1336)

Oleg Nesterov discovered that the kernel did not correctly handle CAP_KILL. A local user could exploit this to send signals to arbitrary processes, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-1337)

Daniel Hokka Zakrisson discovered that signal handling was not correctly limited to process namespaces. A local user could bypass namespace restrictions, possibly leading to a denial of service. Only Ubuntu 8.04 was affected. (CVE-2009-1338)

Pavel Emelyanov discovered that network namespace support for IPv6 was not correctly handled. A remote attacker could send specially crafted IPv6 traffic that would cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. Only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were affected. (CVE-2009-1360)

Neil Horman discovered that the e1000 network driver did not correctly validate certain fields. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted packet that would cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-1385)

Pavan Naregundi discovered that CIFS did not correctly check lengths when handling certain mount requests. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-1439)

Simon Vallet and Frank Filz discovered that execute permissions were not correctly handled by NFSv4. A local user could bypass permissions and run restricted programs, possibly leading to an escalation of privileges. (CVE-2009-1630)

Jeff Layton and Suresh Jayaraman discovered buffer overflows in the CIFS client code. A malicious remote server could exploit this to cause a system crash or execute arbitrary code as root.
(CVE-2009-1633)

Mikulas Patocka discovered that /proc/iomem was not correctly initialized on Sparc. A local attacker could use this file to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. Ubuntu 6.06 was not affected. (CVE-2009-1914)

Miklos Szeredi discovered that OCFS2 did not correctly handle certain splice operations. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a system hang, leading to a denial of service. Ubuntu 6.06 was not affected. (CVE-2009-1961).

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.

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service, privilege escalation or a sensitive memory leak. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CVE-2009-0028     Chris Evans discovered a situation in which a child     process can send an arbitrary signal to its parent.

  - CVE-2009-0834     Roland McGrath discovered an issue on amd64 kernels that     allows local users to circumvent system call audit     configurations which filter based on the syscall numbers     or argument details.

  - CVE-2009-0835     Roland McGrath discovered an issue on amd64 kernels with     CONFIG_SECCOMP enabled. By making a specially crafted     syscall, local users can bypass access restrictions.

  - CVE-2009-0859     Jiri Olsa discovered that a local user can cause a     denial of service (system hang) using a SHM_INFO shmctl     call on kernels compiled with CONFIG_SHMEM disabled.
    This issue does not affect prebuilt Debian kernels.

  - CVE-2009-1046     Mikulas Patocka reported an issue in the console     subsystem that allows a local user to cause memory     corruption by selecting a small number of 3-byte UTF-8     characters.

  - CVE-2009-1072     Igor Zhbanov reported that nfsd was not properly     dropping CAP_MKNOD, allowing users to create device     nodes on file systems exported with root_squash.

  - CVE-2009-1184     Dan Carpenter reported a coding issue in the selinux     subsystem that allows local users to bypass certain     networking checks when running with compat_net=1.

  - CVE-2009-1192     Shaohua Li reported an issue in the AGP subsystem they     may allow local users to read sensitive kernel memory     due to a leak of uninitialized memory.

  - CVE-2009-1242     Benjamin Gilbert reported a local denial of service     vulnerability in the KVM VMX implementation that allows     local users to trigger an oops.

  - CVE-2009-1265     Thomas Pollet reported an overflow in the af_rose     implementation that allows remote attackers to retrieve     uninitialized kernel memory that may contain sensitive     data.

  - CVE-2009-1337     Oleg Nesterov discovered an issue in the exit_notify     function that allows local users to send an arbitrary     signal to a process by running a program that modifies     the exit_signal field and then uses an exec system call     to launch a setuid application.

  - CVE-2009-1338     Daniel Hokka Zakrisson discovered that a kill(-1) is     permitted to reach processes outside of the current     process namespace.

  - CVE-2009-1439     Pavan Naregundi reported an issue in the CIFS filesystem     code that allows remote users to overwrite memory via a     long nativeFileSystem field in a Tree Connect response     during mount.

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

  - CVE-2008-4307     Bryn M. Reeves reported a denial of service in the NFS     filesystem. Local users can trigger a kernel BUG() due     to a race condition in the do_setlk function.

  - CVE-2008-5079     Hugo Dias reported a DoS condition in the ATM subsystem     that can be triggered by a local user by calling the     svc_listen function twice on the same socket and reading     /proc/net/atm/*vc.

  - CVE-2008-5395     Helge Deller discovered a denial of service condition     that allows local users on PA-RISC systems to crash a     system by attempting to unwind a stack containing     userspace addresses.

  - CVE-2008-5700     Alan Cox discovered a lack of minimum timeouts on SG_IO     requests, which allows local users of systems using ATA     to cause a denial of service by forcing drives into PIO     mode.

  - CVE-2008-5701     Vlad Malov reported an issue on 64-bit MIPS systems     where a local user could cause a system crash by crafing     a malicious binary which makes o32 syscalls with a     number less than 4000.

  - CVE-2008-5702     Zvonimir Rakamaric reported an off-by-one error in the     ib700wdt watchdog driver which allows local users to     cause a buffer underflow by making a specially crafted     WDIOC_SETTIMEOUT ioctl call.

  - CVE-2009-0028     Chris Evans discovered a situation in which a child     process can send an arbitrary signal to its parent.

  - CVE-2009-0029     Christian Borntraeger discovered an issue effecting the     alpha, mips, powerpc, s390 and sparc64 architectures     that allows local users to cause a denial of service or     potentially gain elevated privileges.

  - CVE-2009-0031     Vegard Nossum discovered a memory leak in the keyctl     subsystem that allows local users to cause a denial of     service by consuming all of kernel memory.

  - CVE-2009-0065     Wei Yongjun discovered a memory overflow in the SCTP     implementation that can be triggered by remote users,     permitting remote code execution.

  - CVE-2009-0269     Duane Griffin provided a fix for an issue in the     eCryptfs subsystem which allows local users to cause a     denial of service (fault or memory corruption).

  - CVE-2009-0322     Pavel Roskin provided a fix for an issue in the dell_rbu     driver that allows a local user to cause a denial of     service (oops) by reading 0 bytes from a sysfs entry.

  - CVE-2009-0675     Roel Kluin discovered inverted logic in the skfddi     driver that permits local, unprivileged users to reset     the driver statistics.

  - CVE-2009-0676     Clement LECIGNE discovered a bug in the sock_getsockopt     function that may result in leaking sensitive kernel     memory.

  - CVE-2009-0745     Peter Kerwien discovered an issue in the ext4 filesystem     that allows local users to cause a denial of service     (kernel oops) during a resize operation.

  - CVE-2009-0834     Roland McGrath discovered an issue on amd64 kernels that     allows local users to circumvent system call audit     configurations which filter based on the syscall numbers     or argument details.

  - CVE-2009-0859     Jiri Olsa discovered that a local user can cause a     denial of service (system hang) using a SHM_INFO shmctl     call on kernels compiled with CONFIG_SHMEM disabled.
    This issue does not affect prebuilt Debian kernels.

  - CVE-2009-1046     Mikulas Patocka reported an issue in the console     subsystem that allows a local user to cause memory     corruption by selecting a small number of 3-byte UTF-8     characters.

  - CVE-2009-1192     Shaohua Li reported an issue in the AGP subsystem that     may allow local users to read sensitive kernel memory     due to a leak of uninitialized memory.

  - CVE-2009-1242     Benjamin Gilbert reported a local denial of service     vulnerability in the KVM VMX implementation that allows     local users to trigger an oops.

  - CVE-2009-1265     Thomas Pollet reported an overflow in the af_rose     implementation that allows remote attackers to retrieve     uninitialized kernel memory that may contain sensitive     data.

  - CVE-2009-1337     Oleg Nesterov discovered an issue in the exit_notify     function that allows local users to send an arbitrary     signal to a process by running a program that modifies     the exit_signal field and then uses an exec system call     to launch a setuid application.

  - CVE-2009-1338     Daniel Hokka Zakrisson discovered that a kill(-1) is     permitted to reach processes outside of the current     process namespace.

  - CVE-2009-1439     Pavan Naregundi reported an issue in the CIFS filesystem     code that allows remote users to overwrite memory via a     long nativeFileSystem field in a Tree Connect response     during mount.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
39586	Ubuntu 6.06 LTS / 8.04 LTS / 8.10 / 9.04 : linux, linux-source-2.6.15 vulnerabilities (USN-793-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	high
38795	Debian DSA-1800-1 : linux-2.6 - denial of service/privilege escalation/sensitive memory leak	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
38668	Debian DSA-1787-1 : linux-2.6.24 - denial of service/privilege escalation/information leak	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2009-1338

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

critical