Two vulnerabilities have been reported in the Linux kernel, which can be exploited to potentially disclose kernel data or cause a DoS (Denial of Service).

1) A race condition in the terminal subsystem can reportedly be exploited by malicious, local users to cause crashes or disclose small random amounts of kernel data by issuing a certain ioctl call on a terminal interface while another thread is performing a read or write operation.

2) Another race condition in the terminal subsystem can potentially be exploited by malicious people to cause a crash by connecting to a PPP dial-up port, issue a switch from console to PPP, and then time the arrival of sent data with the line discipline switch.

Solution
Patches are reportedly available for the 2.4.x kernel branch.
Further details available in Customer Area

Provided and/or discovered by
Reported by Alan Cox.

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area