Re: CVE request: kernel: heap corruption in IrDA

[Dan Rosenberg <dan.j.rosenberg () gmail com>]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:59 AM, Eugene Teo <eugene () redhat com> wrote:
> On 03/21/2011 03:26 AM, Dan Rosenberg wrote:
> > When providing an invalid IrDA nickname for an IrNET peer, a local
> > attacker can cause a kernel panic due to an underflow in a memcpy()
> > size calculation or cause a controllable heap overflow that may lead
> > to privilege escalation.  Write access to the /dev/irnet device file
> > is required to trigger the vulnerability.
> >
> > Reference:
> > http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=130060169116047&w=2
>
> The default permissions for /dev/irnet is root-read/write only. In the past
> I have ignored such issues that can only be triggered by root, even though
> the permissions can be changed. I wouldn't assign a CVE name for this. CC'ed
> Steve.

Fair enough, I should probably have been more clear about the exact
impact of the flaw.  But given recent discussions about hardening the
kernel even against the root user, it seems like reliably triggered
kernel memory corruption of any kind enables crossing some security
boundary, so this may still deserve a CVE - just one with a
description that accurately reflects the relatively less common attack
scenario.

-Dan

> Thanks, Eugene
> --
> main(i) { putchar(182623909 >> (i-1) * 5&31|!!(i<7)<<6) && main(++i); }