CVE-2015-8539

Description

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's key management system where it was possible for an attacker to escalate privileges or crash the machine. If a user key gets negatively instantiated, an error code is cached in the payload area. A negatively instantiated key may be then be positively instantiated by updating it with valid data. However, the ->update key type method must be aware that the error code may be there.

Statement

This issue does not affect the Linux kernels as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. This issue does affect the kernels shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, MRG-2 and realtime kernels and plans to be addressed in a future update.

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 v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score7.87.8N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredLowLowN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityHighHighN/A
Integrity ImpactHighHighN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

CWE-667

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)

Inconsistent locking discipline can lead to deadlock.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Dmitry Vyukov (Google engineering) for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Not sure what something means? Check out our Security Glossary.

Want to get errata notifications? Sign up here.