CVE-2014-5045

Description

A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's VFS subsystem handled reference counting when performing unmount operations on symbolic links. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to exhaust all available memory on the system or, potentially, trigger a use-after-free error, resulting in a system crash or privilege escalation.

Statement

This issue does not affect Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2.

Future Linux kernel updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 may address this issue.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

CVSS v2 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score6.26.2N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Access ComplexityHighHighN/A
AuthenticationNoneNoneN/A
Confidentiality ImpactCompleteCompleteN/A
Integrity ImpactCompleteCompleteN/A
Availability ImpactCompleteCompleteN/A

Vector

Red Hat: AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

NVD: AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Vasily Averin (Parallels) for reporting this issue.

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