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SYNTHESIS OF THE VULNERABILITY

A local attacker can use the move_pages() system call, in order to
read kernel memory pages.

Severity: 1/4

Consequences: data reading

Provenance: user shell

Means of attack: no proof of concept, no attack

Ability of attacker: expert (4/4)

Confidence: confirmed by the editor (5/5)

Diffusion of the vulnerable configuration: high (3/3)

Creation date: 08/02/2010

IMPACTED PRODUCTS

– Linux kernel

DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY

The NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) architecture is used on
multi-processors systems, where each node has its own memory area.

The move_pages() system call moves pages to another node:
move_pages(pid, nr_pages, address, nodes, ...);

However, the nodes value is not checked. An attacker can therefore
use a large value or a negative value, to force the kernel to move
pages to a zone which can be read.

A local attacker can thus use the move_pages() system call, in
order to read kernel memory pages.

CHARACTERISTICS

Identifiers: BID-38144, CVE-2010-0415, VIGILANCE-VUL-9417

http://vigilance.fr/vulnerability/Linux-kernel-memory-reading-via-sys-move-pages-9417