The Linux kernel is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference in the ext4/mballoc.c:ext4_process_freed_data() function. An attacker could trick a legitimate user or a privileged attacker could exploit this by mounting a crafted ext4 image to cause a kernel panic. References: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199179 (reproducer #1) https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199275 (reproducer #2) http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2018/q1/284 An upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8e4b5eae5decd
Acknowledgments: Name: Wen Xu
Created kernel tracking bugs for this issue: Affects: fedora-all [bug 1560781]
Notes: While the reproducer works when run as a privileged user (the "root"), this requires a mount of a certain filesystem image. An unprivileged attacker cannot do this even from a user+mount namespace: $ unshare -U -r -m # mount -t ext4 fs.img mnt/ mount: mnt/: mount failed: Operation not permitted. The article https://lwn.net/Articles/652468/ (thanks, Jonathan!) discusses unprivileged user mounts and hostile filesystem images: > ... for the most part, the mount() system call is denied to processes running > within user namespaces, even if they are privileged in their namespaces. It also states that unprivileged filesystem mounts are not allowed as of now in the Linux kernel and probably won't be allowed in a future. Until that such flaws are considered as not exploitable: > There were no proposals for solutions to the hostile-filesystem problem. > But, in the absence of some sort of assurance that they can be made safe, > unprivileged filesystem mounts are unlikely to gain acceptance; even if the > feature gets into the kernel, distributions would be likely to disable it. On the other hand, there is a potential possibility that still an attacker can trick a regular user to mount a malicious filesystem image, like trick him to insert an usb-flash-drive with a forged filesystem to a desktop system which will auto-mount it. In case this results only in a system crash (a DoS due to, for example, a NULL pointer dereference) the flaw impact is low but it still exists. Another example is that if an attacker wants to hack into his coworker's notebook. While a coworker is away (on a coffee break) an attacker may insert an usb-flash-drive into the target notebook. In case of a flaw which results in a privilege escalation the flaw's impact is high. In case of a system crashes the impact is lower, but still a harm is done by crashing the system mid-work and losing a work done so far. So the Red Hat would still consider bugs which require mounting a filesystem image to exploit as security flaws.
This was fixed for Fedora with the 4.16.4 stable updates.
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2018:3083 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:3083
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2018:3096 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:3096
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2018:2948 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2948