DescriptionEugene Teo (Security Response)
2010-11-04 06:30:11 UTC
The semctl syscall has several code paths that lead to the leakage of
uninitialized kernel stack memory (namely the IPC_INFO, SEM_INFO,
IPC_STAT, and SEM_STAT commands) during the use of the older, obsolete
version of the semid_ds struct.
The copy_semid_to_user() function declares a semid_ds struct on the stack
and copies it back to the user without initializing or zeroing the
"sem_base", "sem_pending", "sem_pending_last", and "undo" pointers,
allowing the leakage of 16 bytes of kernel stack memory.
The code is still reachable on 32-bit systems - when calling semctl()
newer glibc's automatically OR the IPC command with the IPC_64 flag, but
invoking the syscall directly allows users to use the older versions of
the struct.
Upstream commit:
http://git.kernel.org/linus/982f7c2b2e6a28f8f266e075d92e19c0dd4c6e56
Acknowledgements:
Red Hat would like to thank Dan Rosenberg for reporting this issue.