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Linux Kernel SMP "/proc" Race Condition Denial of Service
Secunia Advisory: SA20349
Release Date: 2006-05-31
Popularity: 9,066 views

Critical:
Not critical
Impact: DoS
Where: Local system
Solution Status: Unpatched

OS:Linux Kernel 2.6.x

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CVE reference:CVE-2006-2629


Description:
Tony Griffiths has reported a vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service).

The vulnerability is cause due to a memory corruption error in the "dentry_unused" list within the "prune_dcache()" function. This can be exploited to crash the kernel when running on SMP hardware by causing a race condition such that one or more tasks exit while another task is reading their /proc entries.

The vulnerability has been reported in versions 2.6.15 through 2.6.17. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution:
Grant only trusted users access to affected systems.

Secunia is currently not aware of an official version addressing this.

Provided and/or discovered by:
Tony Griffiths

Original Advisory:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114860432801543&w=2


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