Vigil@nce: Linux kernel, denial of service via rtl8169
December 2009 by Vigil@nce
SYNTHESIS OF THE VULNERABILITY
An attacker can use a memory leak of the rtl8169 driver, in order
to generate a denial of service.
Severity: 2/4
Consequences: denial of service of computer
Provenance: LAN
Means of attack: 1 attack
Ability of attacker: technician (2/4)
Confidence: confirmed by the editor (5/5)
Diffusion of the vulnerable configuration: high (3/3)
Creation date: 16/12/2009
IMPACTED PRODUCTS
– Debian Linux
– Linux kernel
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux
– SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY
The rtl8169 driver implements the support of network adapters of
the Realtek RTL81xx suite. These adapters can receive Ethernet
frames with a size of 16383 bytes (jumbo frames).
However, the rtl8169_rx_interrupt() and rtl8169_start_xmit()
functions of the drivers/net/r8169.c file do not free the memory
used by large frames.
An attacker located on a network supporting jumbo frames can
therefore send numerous frames in order to generate a denial of
service.
CHARACTERISTICS
Identifiers: BID-36706, CVE-2009-3613, DSA 1915-1, DSA 1928-1,
RHSA-2009:1540-01, RHSA-2009:1548-01, RHSA-2009:1671-01,
SUSE-SA:2009:064, VIGILANCE-VUL-9293
http://vigilance.fr/vulnerability/Linux-kernel-denial-of-service-via-rtl8169-9293