Re: Registration Weakness in Linux Kernel's Binary formats

From: Kyle Moffett
Date: Tue Oct 03 2006 - 17:54:15 EST


On Oct 03, 2006, at 17:25:07, Bráulio Oliveira wrote:
Just forwarding....

Well, you could have checked the list archives first to make sure the idiot didn't send it here himself. Secondly if you're going to forward something like this best send it to security@xxxxxxxxxx first.

Of course, it's partially the abovementioned idiot's fault for BCCing a mailing list and several others:
To: undisclosed-recipients

Hello,
The present document aims to demonstrate a design weakness found in the
handling of simply linked lists used to register binary formats handled by Linux kernel, and affects all the kernel families (2.0/2.2/2.4/2.6), allowing the insertion of infection modules in kernel space that can be used by malicious users to create infection tools, for example rootkits.

Would be nice if I could get to your paper to actually read it, but as it returns a 404 error I'm going to make one brief statement:

If you can load another binary format or access the "simply linked lists" of the binfmt chain in any way, then you're root and therefore there are easier ways to own the box than patching the kernel.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett



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