Secunia

Rudolf Polzer has reported a vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, which potentially can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to the way console keyboard mapping is handled. The keyboard map installed by a local user using "loadkeys" is applied to all virtual consoles and is not being reset after the user logs out.

Successful exploitation allows malicious console users to inject arbitrary shell commands into certain key mappings, which are executed when the next logon console user uses the re-mapped key.

The vulnerability has been reported in Kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
The vulnerability has been fixed in version 2.4.32-rc2 and in version 2.6.14-git12.

Provided and/or discovered by
Rudolf Polzer

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
Debian:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=334113

Kernel.org:
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/snapshots/patch-2.6.14-git12.log
http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=0b360adbdb54d5b98b78d57ba0916bc4b8871968
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/testing/patch-2.4.32.log
http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/marcelo/linux-2.4.git;a=commit;h=2afb6d8ea04e81a1547e8e51b7550a8fd69b9fce

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area