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Severe Linux Kernel Flaw found in RDS
- By Elite CIO
May 21, 2019
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Severe Linux Kernel Flaw found in RDS
Linux systems running kernels prior to 5.0.8 require patching after news emerged of a high severity flaw that could be remotely exploited.
According to the advisory, CVE-2019-1181 is a race condition affecting the kernel’s rds_tcp_kill_sock in net/rds/tcp.c “leading to a use after free, related to net namespace clean up.” The RDS bit refers to systems running there liable data gram sockets (RDS) for the TCP module, which means only systems that run applications using this are affected. The attention grabbing part is that this opens unpatched systems to remote companies and denial of services without the need for system privileges or user interaction.
On other hand, the attack complexity is described as ‘High’, and any such attack would need to be launched from the local network. That explains why it’s been given a CVS S 3.0 impact score of 5.9 with an exploit ability score of only 2.2.
We get some clues to the complexity required for exploitation in comments added to Red Hat’s advisory, which states that it requires the attackers to “manipulate socket state while a network namespace is being torn down.
Author: Atul Bansal, Gateway Rail