Slashdot Mirror
Are the Hard-to-Exploit Bugs In LZO Compression Algorithm Just Hype?
NotInHere (3654617) writes In 1996, Markus F. X. J. Oberhumer wrote an implementation of the Lempel–Ziv compression, which is used in various places like the Linux kernel, libav, openVPN, and the Curiosity rover. As security researchers have found out, the code contained integer overflow and buffer overrun vulnerabilities, in the part of the code that was responsible for processing uncompressed parts of the data. Those vulnerabilities are, however, very hard to exploit, and their scope is dependent on the actual implementation. According to Oberhumer, the problem only affects 32-bit systems. "I personally do not know about any client program that actually is affected", Oberhumer sais, calling the news about the possible security issue a media hype.
Why should the Linux kernel have a compression algorithm in it?
Because it needs to compress and decompress things.
The kernel image is usually compressed anyway, then you've got things like page compression for zram, in-filesystem compression support - heck, BTRFS uses LZO! I think some network layer stuff like PPP supports header compression, and all that's only the things I'm vaguely aware of.