CVE-2010-3081: 64bit Linux Kernel Root Exploit
Well its been a heavy week on the security front, first up is a Linux root exploit for 64bit Machines.
A vulnerability in the 32-bit compatibility layer for 64-bit systems was reported. It is caused by insecure allocation of user space memory when translating system call inputs to 64-bit. A stack pointer underflow can occur when using the “compat_alloc_user_space” method with an arbitrary length input.
What does that mean? Essentially, some sanity checks in the compat_alloc_user_space function to check the length and ensure that the pointer to the block of memory is within the user-space of the process is valid was missing. The fix has already been committed but if you are running any x64 versions of Linux, make sure you update your Kernel – especially now that the exploit code is publicly available!
Read up on the exploit by Jeff Arnold from Ksplice and use this very useful CVE-2010-3081 high-profile exploit detection tool to determine if you’re boxens are already compromised.
Of particular note from his article is the breadth of exploitable distributions – see the references below for vendor specific information:
This vulnerability was introduced into the Linux kernel in April 2008, and so essentially every distribution is affected, including RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, OpenVZ, CloudLinux, and SuSE, among others. A few vendors have released kernels that fix the vulnerability if you reboot, but other vendors, including Red Hat, are still working on releasing an updated kernel.
After downloading and running the tool under a non-sudo account, you should cheerfully get the following output.
thushan@dingo:~/tmp$ ./diagnose-2010-3081 Diagnostic tool for public CVE-2010-3081 exploit -- Ksplice, Inc. (see http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/cve-2010-3081) $$$ Kernel release: 2.6.32-23-server !!! Not a RHEL kernel, will skip LSM method $$$ Backdoor in LSM (1/3): not available. $$$ Backdoor in timer_list_fops (2/3): checking...not present. $$$ Backdoor in IDT (3/3): checking...not present. Your system is free from the backdoors that would be left in memory by the published exploit for CVE-2010-3081. thushan@dingo:~/tmp$
If not, its time to put those security drills into action!
References
- Redhat – https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-40265
- CentOS – http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2010-September/099268.html
- Ubuntu – http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-988-1
- Debian – http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-3081
I have found a few references to OpenSolaris still there and there is currently no xVM Xen (dom0) support nor lx (Linux) branded zones. Not to worry, keep an eye out on the 
