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5-Year-Old Linux Kernel Bug Fixed

Posted by Soulskill on from the must-have-been-union dept.

rastos1 sends in a report about a significant bug fix for the Linux kernel (CVE-2014-0196). "'The memory-corruption vulnerability, which was introduced in version 2.6.31-rc3, released no later than 2009, allows unprivileged users to crash or execute malicious code on vulnerable systems, according to the notes accompanying proof-of-concept code available here. The flaw resides in the n_tty_write function controlling the Linux pseudo tty device. 'This is the first serious privilege escalation vulnerability since the perf_events issue (CVE-2013-2049) in April 2013 that is potentially reliably exploitable, is not architecture or configuration dependent, and affects a wide range of Linux kernels (since 2.6.31),' Dan Rosenberg, a senior security researcher at Azimuth Security, told Ars in an e-mail. 'A bug this serious only comes out once every couple years.' ... While the vulnerability can be exploited only by someone with an existing account, the requirement may not be hard to satisfy in hosting facilities that provide shared servers, Rosenberg said."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is the problem with Linux Security by jcochran · · Score: 1, Troll

    The GIT entry for the bug was entered Dec 3, 2013. So that means at a minimum, the bug was known of and not fixed for 5 months. That's a bit excessive for 'A bug this serious only comes out once every couple years' kind of bug. I'll agree that 5 months is a lot shorter than 5 years, but it's still far too long.

  2. Re:This is the problem with Linux Security by metrix007 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Given that the people in charge don't tend to disclose security vulnerabilities and actively hide them, it's difficult to say how long it was known for.

    --
    If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
  3. Re:This is the problem with Linux Security by kwbauer · · Score: 0, Troll

    According to all the hype about FOSS, it should have been discovered by all those thousands of pairs of eyes before it ever shipped so it should have been fixed at least five years ago, according to all that hype.

  4. Re:This is the problem with Linux Security by kwbauer · · Score: 0, Troll

    but this is open source and open-source proponents have always claimed in the past that the advantage of open-source is that the bugs are discovered by the thousands of pairs of eyes before they ship. So the truth is that this bug was discovered five years ago but not fixed. Either that or there is no inherent security advantage to open-source. Which falsehood have you been telling all these years, boys?