Vulnerability Note VU#920689

Linux Kernel vulnerable to DoS via the ipv6_getsockopt_sticky() function

Original Release date: 13 Mar 2007 | Last revised: 13 Mar 2007

Overview

The Linux Kernel contains a vulnerability that may allow a remote attacker to create a denial-of-service condition.

Description

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a IP standard that is designed to replace the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The Linux kernel provides IPv6 support, and Linux vendors may enable IPv6 by default.

The Linux kernel contains a condition that may allow a null pointer to be dereferenced during a memory allocation by the ipv6_getsockopt_sticky() function in net/ipv6/ipv6_sockglue.c. Note that this vulnerability may be present in both the 2.4 and 2.6 versions of the Linux kernel.

Impact

A remote unauthenticated attacker may be able to cause the kernel to panic (Oops) on a vulnerable system, thereby creating a denial of service.. If the vulnerable software is running on a server, all clients that rely on the server will also be affected.

Solution

Upgrade
This issue has been addressed in Linux kernel version 2.6.20.2. Users who do not compile their kernels from source should contact their operating system vendor for updated kernel packages.


Disable IPv6

If IPv6 functionality is not needed, disabling it may mitigate this vulnerability. Adding alias net-pf-10 ipv6 off to your modprobe configuration file and rebooting may disable IPv6 functionality.

Systems Affected

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
Linux Kernel ArchivesVulnerable-13 Mar 2007

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

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

References

Credit

Thanks to Chris Wright for information that was used in this report.

This document was written by Ryan Giobbi.

Other Information

  • CVE IDs: CVE-2007-1000
  • Date Public: 12 Mar 2007
  • Date First Published: 13 Mar 2007
  • Date Last Updated: 13 Mar 2007
  • Severity Metric: 3.71
  • Document Revision: 13

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