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Severity: 1/4

Consequences: denial of service of computer

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: 05/10/2009

IMPACTED PRODUCTS

– OpenBSD

DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY

Streaming SIMD Extensions are integrated into Intel Pentium III
and later processors. New XMM0 to XMM7 registers are provided,
where floating point operations can be done.

The trap() function of the sys/arch/i386/i386/trap.c file manages
exceptions which can occur on the processor. However, the case
"T_XFTRAP" (SIMD Floating Point fault) is not handled. When it
occurs, the system panics.

On an i386 processor, a local attacker can therefore generate an
XMM exception, in order to stop OpenBSD.

CHARACTERISTICS

Identifiers: BID-36589, VIGILANCE-VUL-9072

http://vigilance.fr/vulnerability/OpenBSD-denial-of-service-via-XMM-9072