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LWN.net: An unpleasant local kernel vulnerability

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Perception Point discloses a use-after-free vulnerability in the kernel's keyring subsystem; it is exploitable for local privilege escalation. "If a process causes the kernel to leak 0x100000000 references to the same object, it can later cause the kernel to think the object is no longer referenced and consequently free the object. If the same process holds another legitimate reference and uses it after the kernel freed the object, it will cause the kernel to reference deallocated, or a reallocated memory. This way, we can achieve a use-after-free, by using the exact same bug from before. A lot has been written on use-after-free vulnerability exploitation in the kernel, so the following steps wouldn’t surprise an experienced vulnerability researcher." This bug, introduced in 3.8, looks like a good one to patch quickly; of course, for vast numbers of users of mobile and embedded systems, that may not be an option.

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