The Linux kernel 2.6.9 through 2.6.17 on the x86_64 and amd64 platforms allows local users to cause a denial of service (panic) via a 32-bit application that calls mprotect on its Virtual Dynamic Shared Object (VDSO) page and then triggers a segmentation fault.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2010:0146 :

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

This update fixes the following security issues :

* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the sctp_rcv_ootb() function in the Linux kernel Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted SCTP packet to a target system, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2010-0008, Important)

* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux kernel.
During a core dump, the kernel did not check if the Virtual Dynamically-linked Shared Object page was accessible. On Intel 64 and AMD64 systems, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a kernel panic by running a crafted 32-bit application.
(CVE-2009-4271, Important)

* an information leak was found in the print_fatal_signal() implementation in the Linux kernel. When '/proc/sys/kernel/print-fatal-signals' is set to 1 (the default value is 0), memory that is reachable by the kernel could be leaked to user-space. This issue could also result in a system crash. Note that this flaw only affected the i386 architecture. (CVE-2010-0003, Moderate)

* on AMD64 systems, it was discovered that the kernel did not ensure the ELF interpreter was available before making a call to the SET_PERSONALITY macro. A local attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by running a 32-bit application that attempts to execute a 64-bit application. (CVE-2010-0307, Moderate)

* missing capability checks were found in the ebtables implementation, used for creating an Ethernet bridge firewall. This could allow a local, unprivileged user to bypass intended capability restrictions and modify ebtables rules. (CVE-2010-0007, Low)

This update also fixes the following bugs :

* under some circumstances, a locking bug could have caused an online ext3 file system resize to deadlock, which may have, in turn, caused the file system or the entire system to become unresponsive. In either case, a reboot was required after the deadlock. With this update, using resize2fs to perform an online resize of an ext3 file system works as expected. (BZ#553135)

* some ATA and SCSI devices were not honoring the barrier=1 mount option, which could result in data loss after a crash or power loss.
This update applies a patch to the Linux SCSI driver to ensure ordered write caching. This solution does not provide cache flushes; however, it does provide data integrity on devices that have no write caching (or where write caching is disabled) and no command queuing. For systems that have command queuing or write cache enabled there is no guarantee of data integrity after a crash. (BZ#560563)

* it was found that lpfc_find_target() could loop continuously when scanning a list of nodes due to a missing spinlock. This missing spinlock allowed the list to be changed after the list_empty() test, resulting in a NULL value, causing the loop. This update adds the spinlock, resolving the issue. (BZ#561453)

* the fix for CVE-2009-4538 provided by RHSA-2010:0020 introduced a regression, preventing Wake on LAN (WoL) working for network devices using the Intel PRO/1000 Linux driver, e1000e. Attempting to configure WoL for such devices resulted in the following error, even when configuring valid options :

'Cannot set new wake-on-lan settings: Operation not supported not setting wol'

This update resolves this regression, and WoL now works as expected for network devices using the e1000e driver. (BZ#565496)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

This update fixes the following security issues :

  - a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the     sctp_rcv_ootb() function in the Linux kernel Stream     Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. A     remote attacker could send a specially crafted SCTP     packet to a target system, resulting in a denial of     service. (CVE-2010-0008, Important)

  - a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux     kernel. During a core dump, the kernel did not check if     the Virtual Dynamically-linked Shared Object page was     accessible. On Intel 64 and AMD64 systems, a local,     unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a kernel     panic by running a crafted 32-bit application.
    (CVE-2009-4271, Important)

  - an information leak was found in the     print_fatal_signal() implementation in the Linux kernel.
    When '/proc/sys/kernel/print-fatal-signals' is set to 1     (the default value is 0), memory that is reachable by     the kernel could be leaked to user-space. This issue     could also result in a system crash. Note that this flaw     only affected the i386 architecture. (CVE-2010-0003,     Moderate)

  - on AMD64 systems, it was discovered that the kernel did     not ensure the ELF interpreter was available before     making a call to the SET_PERSONALITY macro. A local     attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of     service by running a 32-bit application that attempts to     execute a 64-bit application. (CVE-2010-0307, Moderate)

  - missing capability checks were found in the ebtables     implementation, used for creating an Ethernet bridge     firewall. This could allow a local, unprivileged user to     bypass intended capability restrictions and modify     ebtables rules. (CVE-2010-0007, Low)

This update also fixes the following bugs :

  - under some circumstances, a locking bug could have     caused an online ext3 file system resize to deadlock,     which may have, in turn, caused the file system or the     entire system to become unresponsive. In either case, a     reboot was required after the deadlock. With this     update, using resize2fs to perform an online resize of     an ext3 file system works as expected. (BZ#553135)

  - some ATA and SCSI devices were not honoring the     barrier=1 mount option, which could result in data loss     after a crash or power loss. This update applies a patch     to the Linux SCSI driver to ensure ordered write     caching. This solution does not provide cache flushes;
    however, it does provide data integrity on devices that     have no write caching (or where write caching is     disabled) and no command queuing. For systems that have     command queuing or write cache enabled there is no     guarantee of data integrity after a crash. (BZ#560563)

  - it was found that lpfc_find_target() could loop     continuously when scanning a list of nodes due to a     missing spinlock. This missing spinlock allowed the list     to be changed after the list_empty() test, resulting in     a NULL value, causing the loop. This update adds the     spinlock, resolving the issue. (BZ#561453)

  - the fix for CVE-2009-4538 provided by RHSA-2010:0020     introduced a regression, preventing Wake on LAN (WoL)     working for network devices using the Intel PRO/1000     Linux driver, e1000e. Attempting to configure WoL for     such devices resulted in the following error, even when     configuring valid options :

    'Cannot set new wake-on-lan settings: Operation not     supported not setting wol'

This update resolves this regression, and WoL now works as expected for network devices using the e1000e driver. (BZ#565496)

The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

USN-947-1 fixed vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Fixes for CVE-2010-0419 caused failures when using KVM in certain situations.
This update reverts that fix until a better solution can be found.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

It was discovered that the Linux kernel did not correctly handle memory protection of the Virtual Dynamic Shared Object page when running a 32-bit application on a 64-bit kernel. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2009-4271)

It was discovered that the r8169 network driver did not correctly check the size of Ethernet frames. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-4537)

Wei Yongjun discovered that SCTP did not correctly validate certain chunks. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to monopolize CPU resources, leading to a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0008)

It was discovered that KVM did not correctly limit certain privileged IO accesses on x86. Processes in the guest OS with access to IO regions could gain further privileges within the guest OS. (Did not affect Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0298, CVE-2010-0306, CVE-2010-0419)

Evgeniy Polyakov discovered that IPv6 did not correctly handle certain TUN packets. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(Only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0437)

Sachin Prabhu discovered that GFS2 did not correctly handle certain locks. A local attacker with write access to a GFS2 filesystem could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-0727)

Jamie Strandboge discovered that network virtio in KVM did not correctly handle certain high-traffic conditions. A remote attacker could exploit this by sending specially crafted traffic to a guest OS, causing the guest to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0741)

Marcus Meissner discovered that the USB subsystem did not correctly handle certain error conditions. A local attacker with access to a USB device could exploit this to read recently used kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy and potentially root privilege escalation. (CVE-2010-1083)

Neil Brown discovered that the Bluetooth subsystem did not correctly handle large amounts of traffic. A physically proximate remote attacker could exploit this by sending specially crafted traffic that would consume all available system memory, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and 10.04 LTS were not affected.) (CVE-2010-1084)

Jody Bruchon discovered that the sound driver for the AMD780V did not correctly handle certain conditions. A local attacker with access to this hardward could exploit the flaw to cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2010-1085)

Ang Way Chuang discovered that the DVB driver did not correctly handle certain MPEG2-TS frames. An attacker could exploit this by delivering specially crafted frames to monopolize CPU resources, leading to a denial of service.
(Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1086)

Trond Myklebust discovered that NFS did not correctly handle truncation under certain conditions. A local attacker with write access to an NFS share could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1087)

Al Viro discovered that automount of NFS did not correctly handle symlinks under certain conditions. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS were not affected.) (CVE-2010-1088)

Matt McCutchen discovered that ReiserFS did not correctly protect xattr files in the .reiserfs_priv directory. A local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges or crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1146)

Eugene Teo discovered that CIFS did not correctly validate arguments when creating new files. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or possibly gain root privileges if mmap_min_addr was not set. (CVE-2010-1148)

Catalin Marinas and Tetsuo Handa discovered that the TTY layer did not correctly release process IDs. A local attacker could exploit this to consume kernel resources, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1162)

Neil Horman discovered that TIPC did not correctly check its internal state. A local attacker could send specially crafted packets via AF_TIPC that would cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1187)

Masayuki Nakagawa discovered that IPv6 did not correctly handle certain settings when listening. If a socket were listening with the IPV6_RECVPKTINFO flag, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic that would cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Only Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was affected.) (CVE-2010-1188)

Oleg Nesterov discovered that the Out-Of-Memory handler did not correctly handle certain arrangements of processes. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1488).

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.

It was discovered that the Linux kernel did not correctly handle memory protection of the Virtual Dynamic Shared Object page when running a 32-bit application on a 64-bit kernel. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2009-4271)

It was discovered that the r8169 network driver did not correctly check the size of Ethernet frames. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-4537)

Wei Yongjun discovered that SCTP did not correctly validate certain chunks. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to monopolize CPU resources, leading to a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0008)

It was discovered that KVM did not correctly limit certain privileged IO accesses on x86. Processes in the guest OS with access to IO regions could gain further privileges within the guest OS. (Did not affect Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0298, CVE-2010-0306, CVE-2010-0419)

Evgeniy Polyakov discovered that IPv6 did not correctly handle certain TUN packets. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0437)

Sachin Prabhu discovered that GFS2 did not correctly handle certain locks. A local attacker with write access to a GFS2 filesystem could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2010-0727)

Jamie Strandboge discovered that network virtio in KVM did not correctly handle certain high-traffic conditions. A remote attacker could exploit this by sending specially crafted traffic to a guest OS, causing the guest to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.) (CVE-2010-0741)

Marcus Meissner discovered that the USB subsystem did not correctly handle certain error conditions. A local attacker with access to a USB device could exploit this to read recently used kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy and potentially root privilege escalation.
(CVE-2010-1083)

Neil Brown discovered that the Bluetooth subsystem did not correctly handle large amounts of traffic. A physically proximate remote attacker could exploit this by sending specially crafted traffic that would consume all available system memory, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and 10.04 LTS were not affected.) (CVE-2010-1084)

Jody Bruchon discovered that the sound driver for the AMD780V did not correctly handle certain conditions. A local attacker with access to this hardward could exploit the flaw to cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1085)

Ang Way Chuang discovered that the DVB driver did not correctly handle certain MPEG2-TS frames. An attacker could exploit this by delivering specially crafted frames to monopolize CPU resources, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1086)

Trond Myklebust discovered that NFS did not correctly handle truncation under certain conditions. A local attacker with write access to an NFS share could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1087)

Al Viro discovered that automount of NFS did not correctly handle symlinks under certain conditions. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS were not affected.) (CVE-2010-1088)

Matt McCutchen discovered that ReiserFS did not correctly protect xattr files in the .reiserfs_priv directory. A local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges or crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1146)

Eugene Teo discovered that CIFS did not correctly validate arguments when creating new files. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or possibly gain root privileges if mmap_min_addr was not set. (CVE-2010-1148)

Catalin Marinas and Tetsuo Handa discovered that the TTY layer did not correctly release process IDs. A local attacker could exploit this to consume kernel resources, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2010-1162)

Neil Horman discovered that TIPC did not correctly check its internal state. A local attacker could send specially crafted packets via AF_TIPC that would cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was not affected.) (CVE-2010-1187)

Masayuki Nakagawa discovered that IPv6 did not correctly handle certain settings when listening. If a socket were listening with the IPV6_RECVPKTINFO flag, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic that would cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (Only Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was affected.) (CVE-2010-1188)

Oleg Nesterov discovered that the Out-Of-Memory handler did not correctly handle certain arrangements of processes. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-1488).

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.

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

This update fixes the following security issues :

* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the sctp_rcv_ootb() function in the Linux kernel Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted SCTP packet to a target system, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2010-0008, Important)

* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux kernel.
During a core dump, the kernel did not check if the Virtual Dynamically-linked Shared Object page was accessible. On Intel 64 and AMD64 systems, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a kernel panic by running a crafted 32-bit application.
(CVE-2009-4271, Important)

* an information leak was found in the print_fatal_signal() implementation in the Linux kernel. When '/proc/sys/kernel/print-fatal-signals' is set to 1 (the default value is 0), memory that is reachable by the kernel could be leaked to user-space. This issue could also result in a system crash. Note that this flaw only affected the i386 architecture. (CVE-2010-0003, Moderate)

* on AMD64 systems, it was discovered that the kernel did not ensure the ELF interpreter was available before making a call to the SET_PERSONALITY macro. A local attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by running a 32-bit application that attempts to execute a 64-bit application. (CVE-2010-0307, Moderate)

* missing capability checks were found in the ebtables implementation, used for creating an Ethernet bridge firewall. This could allow a local, unprivileged user to bypass intended capability restrictions and modify ebtables rules. (CVE-2010-0007, Low)

This update also fixes the following bugs :

* under some circumstances, a locking bug could have caused an online ext3 file system resize to deadlock, which may have, in turn, caused the file system or the entire system to become unresponsive. In either case, a reboot was required after the deadlock. With this update, using resize2fs to perform an online resize of an ext3 file system works as expected. (BZ#553135)

* some ATA and SCSI devices were not honoring the barrier=1 mount option, which could result in data loss after a crash or power loss.
This update applies a patch to the Linux SCSI driver to ensure ordered write caching. This solution does not provide cache flushes; however, it does provide data integrity on devices that have no write caching (or where write caching is disabled) and no command queuing. For systems that have command queuing or write cache enabled there is no guarantee of data integrity after a crash. (BZ#560563)

* it was found that lpfc_find_target() could loop continuously when scanning a list of nodes due to a missing spinlock. This missing spinlock allowed the list to be changed after the list_empty() test, resulting in a NULL value, causing the loop. This update adds the spinlock, resolving the issue. (BZ#561453)

* the fix for CVE-2009-4538 provided by RHSA-2010:0020 introduced a regression, preventing Wake on LAN (WoL) working for network devices using the Intel PRO/1000 Linux driver, e1000e. Attempting to configure WoL for such devices resulted in the following error, even when configuring valid options :

'Cannot set new wake-on-lan settings: Operation not supported not setting wol'

This update resolves this regression, and WoL now works as expected for network devices using the e1000e driver. (BZ#565496)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
68013	Oracle Linux 4 : kernel (ELSA-2010-0146)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	high
60748	Scientific Linux Security Update : kernel on SL4.x i386/x86_64	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	critical
46811	Ubuntu 10.04 LTS : linux regression (USN-947-2)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	high
46810	Ubuntu 6.06 LTS / 8.04 LTS / 9.04 / 9.10 / 10.04 LTS : linux, linux-source-2.6.15 vulnerabilities (USN-947-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	high
46269	RHEL 4 : kernel (RHSA-2010:0146)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
45091	CentOS 4 : kernel (CESA-2010:0146)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2009-4271

medium

Tenable Plugins

high

critical

high

high

high

high