Several local 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:
LMH reported an issue in the minix filesystem that allows local users with mount privileges to create a DoS (printk flood) by mounting a specially crafted corrupt filesystem.
Warren Togami discovered an issue in the hrtimer subsystem that allows a local user to cause a DoS (soft lockup) by requesting a timer sleep for a long period of time leading to an integer overflow.
Venustech AD-LAB discovered a buffer overflow in the isdn ioctl handling, exploitable by a local user.
Blake Frantz discovered that when a core file owned by a non-root user exists, and a root-owned process dumps core over it, the core file retains its original ownership. This could be used by a local user to gain access to sensitive information.
Hugh Dickins discovered an issue in the tmpfs filesystem where, under a rare circumstance, a kernel page may be improperly cleared, leaking sensitive kernel memory to userspace or resulting in a DoS (crash).
These problems have been fixed in the stable distribution in version 2.6.18.dfsg.1-13etch6.
The following matrix lists additional packages that were rebuilt for compatibility with or to take advantage of this update:
| Debian 4.0 (etch) | |
|---|---|
| fai-kernels | 1.17+etch.13etch6 |
| user-mode-linux | 2.6.18-1um-2etch.13etch6 |
We recommend that you upgrade your kernel package immediately and reboot the machine. If you have built a custom kernel from the kernel source package, you will need to rebuild to take advantage of these fixes.
MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.