Vulnerability Note VU#362983

Overview

The RDS protocol implementation of Linux kernels 2.6.30 through 2.6.38-rc8 contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability.

Description

Kernel functions fail to properly check if a user supplied address exists in the user segment of memory. By providing a kernel address to a socket call an unprivileged user can execute arbitrary code as root. Additional details can be found in the VSR Security Advisory.

Impact

An unprivileged local attacker can escalate their privileges to root.

Solution

Apply an update for the specific Linux distribution used.

If the RDS protocol is not needed, it can be disabled with the following command run as root. echo "alias net-pf-21 off" > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-rds

Vendor Information (Learn More)

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Debian GNU/Linux	Affected	-	25 Oct 2010
Gentoo Linux	Affected	-	25 Oct 2010
Red Hat, Inc.	Affected	-	25 Oct 2010
Slackware Linux Inc.	Affected	-	25 Oct 2010
Ubuntu	Affected	-	25 Oct 2010

If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group	Score	Vector
Base	N/A	N/A
Temporal	N/A	N/A
Environmental	N/A	N/A

References

• http://www.vsecurity.com/resources/advisory/20101019-1/

Credit

Thanks to Dan Rosenberg of Virtual Security Research for researching and publishing the details of this vulnerability.

This document was written by Jared Allar.

Other Information

• CVE IDs: CVE-2010-3904
• Date Public: 19 Oct 2010
• Date First Published: 25 Oct 2010
• Date Last Updated: 25 Oct 2010
• Severity Metric: 20.84
• Document Revision: 12