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Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2024-40974

medium Nessus Plugin ID 228742

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

 - In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/pseries: Enforce hcall result buffer validity and size plpar_hcall(), plpar_hcall9(), and related functions expect callers to provide valid result buffers of certain minimum size. Currently this is communicated only through comments in the code and the compiler has no idea. For example, if I write a bug like this: long retbuf[PLPAR_HCALL_BUFSIZE]; // should be PLPAR_HCALL9_BUFSIZE plpar_hcall9(H_ALLOCATE_VAS_WINDOW, retbuf, ...); This compiles with no diagnostics emitted, but likely results in stack corruption at runtime when plpar_hcall9() stores results past the end of the array. (To be clear this is a contrived example and I have not found a real instance yet.) To make this class of error less likely, we can use explicitly-sized array parameters instead of pointers in the declarations for the hcall APIs. When compiled with -Warray- bounds[1], the code above now provokes a diagnostic like this: error: array argument is too small; is of size 32, callee requires at least 72 [-Werror,-Warray-bounds] 60 | plpar_hcall9(H_ALLOCATE_VAS_WINDOW, retbuf, | ^ ~~~~~~ [1] Enabled for LLVM builds but not GCC for now. See commit 0da6e5fd6c37 (gcc: disable '-Warray-bounds' for gcc-13 too) and related changes. (CVE-2024-40974)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 228742

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2024_40974.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 3/5/2025

Updated: 3/5/2025

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.5

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.7

Temporal Score: 4.2

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2024-40974

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.6

Temporal Score: 5.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/local_checks_enabled, global_settings/vendor_unpatched

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/12/2024

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2024-40974