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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2009-2767

Severity High
Score 7.2/10

Summary

The init_posix_timers function in kernel/posix-timers.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.31-rc6 allows local users to cause a denial of service (OOPS) or possibly gain privileges via a CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW clock_nanosleep call that triggers a NULL pointer dereference.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published