Bug 111240

Summary:	CAN-2003-0961 local privilege escalation via do_brk()
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1	Reporter:	Mark J. Cox <mjc>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Arjan van de Ven <arjanv>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	2.1	CC:	petrides, riel
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2003-12-02 13:57:21 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Mark J. Cox 2003-12-01 08:36:31 UTC

A flaw in bounds checking in do_brk in the Linux kernel before 2.4.23
can allow a local user to gain root privileges.

The URL below gives the (2 line) patch that corrects this issue.

http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.4/cset@marcelo@dmt.cyclades|ChangeSet|20031002082056|19757

Although the issue was commited on October 2nd 2003 it was not
believed to be exploitable for privilege escalation.  Working exploits
for this issue have been found in the wild.

Users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 should upgrade to the kernel
packages provided by RHBA-2003:308 released on 30th October 2003 which
already contained a patch to correct this issue.

Comment 1 Mark J. Cox 2003-12-01 08:37:33 UTC

Updated packages for RHEL 2.1 containing just the patch referenced
above are currently in QA.  This issue will be public on 1st Dec 2003.