Description of problem: Jay Fenlason reported that anyone who can open any of the /dev/fw* files on recent version of the new firewire stack can crash machines with ohci 1.0 controllers (or ohci 1.1 controllers that are being used in ohci 1.0 mode because of hardware bugs) by issuing certain ioctls. This causes a null pointer reference in {fw-,}ohci.c. On machines with non-blacklisted ohci1.1 controllers, the call does nothing, which is a bug, but doesn't crash. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the firewire modules are blacklisted by default, and if they are enabled, the default ownership of the /dev/fw* nodes is root:root. https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/66747/
From Jay Fenlason, Here's the critical part of the patch I'm sending upstream: http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/66747/
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2009-4138 to the following vulnerability: Name: CVE-2009-4138 URL: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2009-4138 Assigned: 20091201 Reference: MLIST:[oss-security] 20091215 CVE-2009-4138 kernel: firewire: ohci: handle receive packets with a data length of zero Reference: URL: http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/12/15/1 Reference: CONFIRM: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=8c0c0cc2d9f4c523fde04bdfe41e4380dec8ee54 Reference: CONFIRM: http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/66747/ Reference: CONFIRM: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/snapshots/patch-2.6.32-git9.log Reference: CONFIRM: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=547236 Reference: BID:37339 Reference: URL: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/37339 drivers/firewire/ohci.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.32-git9, when packet-per-buffer mode is used, allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and system crash) or possibly have unknown other impact via an unspecified ioctl associated with receiving an ISO packet that contains zero in the payload-length field.
Also fixed in 2.6.32.2, 2.6.31.9 and 2.6.27.42 with patch: firewire-ohci-handle-receive-packets-with-a-data-length-of-zero.patch
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2010:0046 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0046.html
Patch present on the current RHEL6 git tree.
This issue has been addressed in following products: MRG for RHEL-5 Via RHSA-2010:0631 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0631.html
Statement: The Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4 have a different (and older) implementation of the driver for OHCI 1394 controllers, which is not affected by this issue. It was addressed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG via https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0046.html and https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0631.html respectively.