‘Critical’ Linux Kernel Bugs Revealed

By Dave Nixon

Security researchers have exposed “critical” security defects in a version of the Linux kernel used by a large amount of accepted distributions.

The three bugs permit illicit users to read or write to kernel memory locations or admission to certain resources in certain vservers, according to a SecurityFocus advisory.

They may possibly be exploited by malicious, local users to facilitate denial of service attacks, reveal potentially sensitive information or achieve “root” rights, according to security experts.

The bug affects every versions of the Linux kernel up to version 2.6.24.1, which contains a patch. Distributions such as Ubuntu, Turbolinux, SuSE, Red Hat, Mandriva, Debian and others are affected.

The troubles are inside three functions in the system call fs/splice.c, according to an advisory from Secunia.

“In the 2.6.23 kernel the system call functionality has been further extended resulting in… critical vulnerabilities,” said iSEC Security Research in an advisory.

Secunia opposed the bugs’ seriousness, giving them a less critical ranking.

Exploit code for the vulnerabilities has been at large publicly on the hacker site milw0rm.com, and Core Security Technologies has also developed a commercial exploit for the bugs, researchers said.

Researchers recommended system administrators to revise their kernels without delay.

Last month, a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bug-fixing scheme exposed an average of one security glitch per 1,000 lines of code in 180 extensively used open source software projects.

Additionally Secunia formerly revealed that the amount of security bugs in open source Red Hat Linux operating system and Firefox browsers, far surpassed comparable products from Microsoft last year.