A security issue and a vulnerability have been reported in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to disclose potentially sensitive information or gain escalated privileges.

1) A security issue is caused due to the "do_coredump()" function in fs/exec.c not correctly verifying the user ID of a core dump file when dumping the core into an existing file. This can be exploited to e.g. gain access to sensitive information by tricking an application with another user ID into dumping the core into a preexisting file.

2) A vulnerability is caused due to certain drivers with registered page fault handlers not correctly preventing size expansions of mapped memory regions beyond the originally allocated size. This can be exploited to gain access to other memory areas via e.g. the "mremap()" system call.

Successful exploitation may allow local attackers to disclose and manipulate kernel memory, which potentially can be leveraged to gain escalated privileges.

Solution
Update to 2.4.36.1 or later, or 2.6.22.17 or later.

Provided and/or discovered by
1) Reported in a bug by blake frantz.
2) Reported by the vendor.

Changelog
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Original Advisory
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.22.17
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/ChangeLog-2.4.36
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/ChangeLog-2.4.36.1

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3043
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=c46f739dd39db3b07ab5deb4e3ec81e1c04a91af

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/640942

Deep Links
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