Bug 87913 – Kernel: "is_hugepage_only_range()" Denial of Service (CAN-2005-0916)

• Product: Gentoo Security
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Jean-François Brunette (RETIRED) 2005-04-04 07:44:55 UTC]

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.

[Comment 1 kfm 2005-04-11 12:10:40 UTC]

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

[Comment 2 kfm 2005-04-11 12:12:06 UTC]

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

[Comment 3 Joshua Kinard 2005-04-23 22:29:43 UTC]

mips-sources fixed.

[Comment 4 solar (RETIRED) 2005-05-02 07:47:02 UTC]

Kumba does this effect the mips arch? 
The advisory only mentions ia64 and ppc64 

[Comment 5 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) 2005-05-05 13:36:16 UTC]

Kernel maintainers: This affects 2.6.11 so gentoo-sources et al. still need patching.

[Comment 6 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2005-05-10 15:51:04 UTC]

Fixed in gentoo-sources-2.6.11-r8

[Comment 7 Markus Rothe (RETIRED) 2005-05-11 09:35:46 UTC]

stable on ppc64

[Comment 8 Aron Griffis (RETIRED) 2005-05-11 19:36:26 UTC]

stable on ia64

[Comment 9 Joshua Kinard 2005-05-17 21:06:54 UTC]

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.

[Comment 10 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) 2005-11-26 03:06:53 UTC]

All fixed, closing bug.