Description: Daniel McNeil has reported a vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the AIO (Asynchronous I/O) support within the "is_hugepage_only_range()" function. This can be exploited via a specially crafted program calling the "io_queue_init()" function and then exiting without calling the "io_queue_release()" function. Successful exploitation crashes the system on PPC64 and IA64 architectures, but requires that CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE is enabled. The vulnerability has been reported in versions 2.6.8 and 2.6.11. Other versions may also be affected. Solution: Grant only trusted users access to affected systems.
Daniel McNiel also came up with a patch which I shall attach here (lifted verbatim from Debian's patchset). Reference: http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.6/cset@4248c8c0es30_4YVdwa6vteKi7h_nw
Created attachment 56012 [details, diff] patch to rectify CAN-2005-0916 This instance was taken from debian-2.6.11-2. Also available from: http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.6/cset@4248c8c0es30_4YVdwa6vteKi7h_nw
mips-sources fixed.
Kumba does this effect the mips arch? The advisory only mentions ia64 and ppc64
Kernel maintainers: This affects 2.6.11 so gentoo-sources et al. still need patching.
Fixed in gentoo-sources-2.6.11-r8
stable on ppc64
stable on ia64
solar: Because the patch touches files in mm/ and include/linux/, I felt it prudent to add it into our patchset anyways. While the chances of it affecting us are incredibly slim, if none at all, it shouldn't hurt things to include it on the offchance.
All fixed, closing bug.