First published: Fri Jun 05 2015(Updated: )
From the original report: "If SELinux is enabled, the _unix_run_helper_binary function in Linux-PAM 1.1.8 and earlier hangs indefinitely when verifying a password of 65536 characters, which allows attackers to conduct username enumeration and denial of service attacks. When supplying a password of 65536 characters or more, the process will block on the write(2) call at modules/pam_unix/support.c:614 because it tries to write strlen(passwd)+1 bytes to a blocking pipe and a pipe has a limited capacity of 65536 bytes on Linux." Acknowledgements: Red Hat would like to thank Sebastien Macke of Trustwave SpiderLabs for reporting this issue.
Credit: secalert@redhat.com
Affected Software | Affected Version | How to fix |
---|---|---|
Linux-PAM Linux-PAM | <=1.1.8 | |
Oracle SPARC OPL Service Processor | <=1121 |
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CVE-2015-3238 is a medium severity vulnerability that can lead to denial of service and username enumeration attacks.
To fix CVE-2015-3238, update Linux-PAM to version 1.1.9 or later, which addresses the vulnerability.
CVE-2015-3238 affects systems running Linux-PAM versions 1.1.8 and earlier as well as Oracle SPARC OPL Service Processor with version 1121 or earlier.
CVE-2015-3238 can facilitate username enumeration and denial of service attacks through password verification vulnerabilities.
CVE-2015-3238 exploits SELinux by hanging the _unix_run_helper_binary function when processing overly long passwords.