USN-1105-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

5 April 2011

Multiple kernel flaws.

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Details

Dan Rosenberg discovered that multiple terminal ioctls did not correctly
initialize structure memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read
portions of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy.
(CVE-2010-4075)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the socket filters did not correctly
initialize structure memory. A local attacker could create malicious
filters to read portions of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of
privacy. (CVE-2010-4158)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that certain iovec operations did not calculate
page counts correctly. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the
system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-4162)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the SCSI subsystem did not correctly validate
iov segments. A local attacker with access to a SCSI device could send
specially crafted requests to crash the system, leading to a denial of
service. (CVE-2010-4163, CVE-2010-4668)

Dan Rosenberg discovered multiple flaws in the X.25 facilities parsing. If
a system was using X.25, a remote attacker could exploit this to crash the
system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2010-4164)

Alan Cox discovered that the HCI UART driver did not correctly check if a
write operation was available. If the mmap_min-addr sysctl was changed from
the Ubuntu default to a value of 0, a local attacker could exploit this
flaw to gain root privileges. (CVE-2010-4242)

Nelson Elhage discovered that the kernel did not correctly handle process
cleanup after triggering a recoverable kernel bug. If a local attacker were
able to trigger certain kinds of kernel bugs, they could create a specially
crafted process to gain root privileges. (CVE-2010-4258)

Tavis Ormandy discovered that the install_special_mapping function could
bypass the mmap_min_addr restriction. A local attacker could exploit this
to mmap 4096 bytes below the mmap_min_addr area, possibly improving the
chances of performing NULL pointer dereference attacks. (CVE-2010-4346)

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Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 8.04

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed. If
you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to update that package as
well to get modules which work with the new kernel version. Unless you
manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic,
linux-server, linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically
perform this as well.

References

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