I received this on bugtraq, does anyone know what kind of exploit this is? Root access? DoS? Buffer Overflow?
And how serious is this exploit?

Here is what bugtraq had:
I've released an exploit for the Linux sock_sendpage() NULL pointer dereference[1], discovered by Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes. This exploit was written to illustrate the exploitability of this vulnerability on Power/Cell BE architecture.
...
Linux kernel versions from 2.4.4 to 2.4.37.4, and from 2.6.0 to 2.6.30.4 are vulnerable.

The exploit was tested on:

* CentOS 5.3 (2.6.18-128.7.1.el5) is not vulnerable
* CentOS 5.3 (2.6.18-128.4.1.el5)
* CentOS 5.3 (2.6.18-128.2.1.el5)
...
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (2.6.18-128.7.1.el5) is not vulnerable
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (2.6.18-128.4.1.el5)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (2.6.18-128.2.1.el5)
...
Best regards,
Ramon


The code is available here:
http://www.risesecurity.org/exploits/linux-sendpage.c

It doesn't look like a buffer overload, because I don't see any shell code.

TIA

This would be considered a high priority/severity locally exploited bug allowing code execution at root level or crashing the kernel.

it's a null pointer dereference.

There might be some mitigating steps like blacklisting some modules.. still reading, but wanted first post! lol

There's already a patch out:
http://lwn.net/Articles/347006/

I'd like to remind you that that (even though meant jocularly) is not what posting in LQ Linux Security is about (or shouldn't be). We'd rather like to see people make informed posts instead of letting "first post" urges take over. Wrt quality this is not that kind of forum. Thanks for understanding.

Speaking of being informative, how about next time you either 1) use smaller words, or 2) include definitions. Now I gotta go look up "jocularly".

You received this on Bugtraq a few weeks ago.
We've had the discussion in this forum a few weeks ago.
As before please remind yourself to search LQ wrt efficiency et cetera.
Thanks for understanding.

Very sorry, it won't happen again.