Debian DSA-1687-1 : linux-2.6 - denial of service/privilege escalation

high Nessus Plugin ID 35174

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

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-2008-3527 Tavis Ormandy reported a local DoS and potential privilege escalation in the Virtual Dynamic Shared Objects (vDSO) implementation.

- CVE-2008-3528 Eugene Teo reported a local DoS issue in the ext2 and ext3 filesystems. Local users who have been granted the privileges necessary to mount a filesystem would be able to craft a corrupted filesystem that causes the kernel to output error messages in an infinite loop.

- CVE-2008-4554 Milos Szeredi reported that the usage of splice() on files opened with O_APPEND allows users to write to the file at arbitrary offsets, enabling a bypass of possible assumed semantics of the O_APPEND flag.

- CVE-2008-4576 Vlad Yasevich reported an issue in the SCTP subsystem that may allow remote users to cause a local DoS by triggering a kernel oops.

- CVE-2008-4933 Eric Sesterhenn reported a local DoS issue in the hfsplus filesystem. Local users who have been granted the privileges necessary to mount a filesystem would be able to craft a corrupted filesystem that causes the kernel to overrun a buffer, resulting in a system oops or memory corruption.

- CVE-2008-4934 Eric Sesterhenn reported a local DoS issue in the hfsplus filesystem. Local users who have been granted the privileges necessary to mount a filesystem would be able to craft a corrupted filesystem that results in a kernel oops due to an unchecked return value.

- CVE-2008-5025 Eric Sesterhenn reported a local DoS issue in the hfs filesystem. Local users who have been granted the privileges necessary to mount a filesystem would be able to craft a filesystem with a corrupted catalog name length, resulting in a system oops or memory corruption.

- CVE-2008-5029 Andrea Bittau reported a DoS issue in the unix socket subsystem that allows a local user to cause memory corruption, resulting in a kernel panic.

- 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-2008-5182 Al Viro reported race conditions in the inotify subsystem that may allow local users to acquire elevated privileges.

- CVE-2008-5300 Dann Frazier reported a DoS condition that allows local users to cause the out of memory handler to kill off privileged processes or trigger soft lockups due to a starvation issue in the unix socket subsystem.

Solution

Upgrade the linux-2.6, fai-kernels, and user-mode-linux packages.

For the stable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 2.6.18.dfsg.1-23etch1.

Note: Debian 'etch' includes linux kernel packages based upon both the 2.6.18 and 2.6.24 linux releases. All known security issues are carefully tracked against both packages and both packages will receive security updates until security support for Debian 'etch' concludes.
However, given the high frequency at which low-severity security issues are discovered in the kernel and the resource requirements of doing an update, lower severity 2.6.18 and 2.6.24 updates will typically release in a staggered or 'leap-frog' fashion.

See Also

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-3527

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-3528

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-4554

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-4576

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-4933

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-4934

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5025

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5029

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5079

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5182

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5300

https://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1687

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 35174

File Name: debian_DSA-1687.nasl

Version: 1.19

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 12/16/2008

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.8

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 6.8

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:linux-2.6, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:4.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/15/2008

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/27/2008

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2008-3527, CVE-2008-3528, CVE-2008-4554, CVE-2008-4576, CVE-2008-4933, CVE-2008-4934, CVE-2008-5025, CVE-2008-5029

BID: 31634, 31903, 32093, 32154, 32289, 32676

CWE: 119, 20, 264, 287

DSA: 1687