#VU4062 Resource exhaustion in Linux kernel - CVE-2016-1583

Vulnerability identifier: #VU4062

Vulnerability risk: Low

CVSSv4.0: 7.1 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/U:Clear]

CVE-ID: CVE-2016-1583

CWE-ID: CWE-400

Exploitation vector: Local

Exploit availability: Yes

Vulnerable software:
Linux kernel
Operating systems & Components / Operating system

Vendor: Linux Foundation

Description
The vulnerability allows a local attacker to cause DoS condition and gain elevated privileges on the target system.

The weakness exists in the ecryptfs_privileged_open function in fs/ecryptfs/kthread.c due to stack memory consumption. A local attacker can cause the service to crash and gain elevated privileges via vectors involving crafted mmap calls for /proc pathnames, leading to recursive pagefault handling.

Mitigation
Update to version 4.6.3.

Vulnerable software versions

Linux kernel: 4.6.0 - 4.6.2

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External links
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=2f36db71009304b3f0b95afacd8eba1f9f046b87

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Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability. However, proof of concept for this vulnerability is available.