[K12OSN] Major Kernel Vulnerability in FC6

Julius Szelagiewicz julius at turtle.com
Tue Feb 12 21:53:45 UTC 2008


On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, Nils Breunese wrote:

> k12ltsp wrote:
>
> > It's being reported over the news and online that a major kernel
> > vulnerability exists in many versions of linux, including FC6, that
> > allows
> > any user to gain root access from their command line.
> >
> > We have already had a student learn of this exploit and take down our
> > network. Unfortunately Redhat stopped updating FC6 as of december 7
> > and
> > have no plans to update it anymore. Fixes for the vulnerability are
> > now
> > available for FC7 and FC8.
> >
> > Does anyone know what the status is with K12LTSP moving to FC7 or
> > higher?
>
> LTSP is on track to be incorporated into Fedora 9: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/K12Linux
>   I'm not sure if a K12LTSP release based on Fedora 7 or 8 will ever
> see the light.
>
> > Does anyone know of an RPM Kernel upgrade that is available for FC6
> > that
> > we can install to correct the issue?
>
> If there is a patch someone should be able to build a patched FC6
> kernel I guess. We have a K12LTSP 5EL server, so we have a supported
> setup.
>
> > This exposes a major vulnerability that any student can take
> > advantage of
> > and gain root access.
>
> A guy called Morten Hustveit created a modified version of the exploit
> that patches the vulnerability: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=464953#14
>   Could be a nice temporary fix.
>
Nils, thank you. Works like a charm. somebody mentiond that it broke
terminals' ability to boot. not in my case - everything works fine.
[julius at ltspl ~]$ uname -a
Linux ltspl 2.6.22.14-72.fc6 #1 SMP Wed Nov 21 15:12:59 EST 2007 i686 i686
i386 GNU/Linux

julius




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