CVE-2017-2618

Description

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's handling of clearing SELinux attributes on /proc/pid/attr files. An empty (null) write to this file can crash the system by causing the system to attempt to access unmapped kernel memory.

Statement

This issue does not affect the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 due to a missing commit ( bb646cdb12e75d82258c2f2e7746d5952d3e321a ) which enabled changed system behavior.

This issue does affect Red Hat Enteprise Linux 7 and MRG-2 kernels. A future Linux kernel updates for the respective releases 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 v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.55.55.5
Attack VectorLocalLocalLocal
Attack ComplexityLowLowLow
Privileges RequiredLowLowLow
User InteractionNoneNoneNone
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedUnchanged
ConfidentialityNoneNoneNone
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneNone
Availability ImpactHighHighHigh

Vector

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

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

cve.org: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Instability

This weakness will generally lead to undefined behavior and therefore crashes. In the case of overflows involving loop index variables, the likelihood of infinite loops is also high.

Integrity

Technical Impact: Modify Memory

If the value in question is important to data (as opposed to flow), simple data corruption has occurred. Also, if the wrap around results in other conditions such as buffer overflows, further memory corruption may occur.

Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control

Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Bypass Protection Mechanism

This weakness can sometimes trigger buffer overflows which can be used to execute arbitrary code. This is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy.

Acknowledgements

This issue was discovered by Paul Moore (Red Hat Engineering).

Frequently Asked Questions

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