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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2009-4004

High
7.8/10

Summary

Buffer overflow in the kvm_vcpu_ioctl_x86_setup_mce function in arch/x86/kvm/x86.c in the KVM subsystem in the Linux kernel before 2.6.32-rc7 allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption) or possibly gain privileges via a KVM_X86_SETUP_MCE IOCTL request that specifies a large number of Machine Check Exception (MCE) banks.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

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