Last updated 25 August 2025
A flaw was found in the Linux kernels with commit b6a2fea39318 ("mm: variable length argument support", from July 19, 2007) but without commit da029c11e6b1 ("exec:Limit arg stack to at most 75% of STKLIM", from July 7, 2017). An integer overflow in the Linux kernel's createelftables() function. A local attacker can exploit this vulnerability via a SUID-root binary and obtain full root privileges.
Referenced commits: b6a2fea39318 ("mm: variable length argument support", from July 19, 2007) https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba
da029c11e6b1 ("exec: Limit arg stack to at most 75% of STKLIM", from July 7, 2017) https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/da029c11e6b12f321f36dac8771e833b65cec962
Additional references: https://www.qualys.com/2018/09/25/cve-2018-14634/mutagen-astronomy-integer-overflow-linux-createelftables-cve-2018-14634.txt
A flaw named FragmentSmack was found in the way the Linux kernel handled reassembly of fragmented IPv4 and IPv6 packets. A remote attacker could use this flaw to trigger time and calculation expensive fragment reassembly algorithms by sending specially crafted packets which could lead to a CPU saturation and hence a denial of service on the system.
External References:
https://access.redhat.com/articles/3553061
https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/641765
A fix is a merge commit in the Linux kernel tree:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=c30f1fc041b74ecdb072dd44f858750414b8b19f
consisting of the following commits:
7969e5c40dfd04799d4341f1b7cd266b6e47f227 385114dec8a49b5e5945e77ba7de6356106713f4 fa0f527358bd900ef92f925878ed6bfbd51305cc
A flaw named SegmentSmack was found in the way the Linux kernel handled specially crafted TCP packets. A remote attacker could use this flaw to trigger time and calculation expensive calls to tcpcollapseofoqueue() and tcppruneofoqueue() functions by sending specially modified packets within ongoing TCP sessions which could lead to a CPU saturation and hence a denial of service on the system. Maintaining the denial of service condition requires continuous two-way TCP sessions to a reachable open port, thus the attacks cannot be performed using spoofed IP addresses.
GNU patch does not properly sanitize patch files allowing for malicious patches to pass arbitrary shell commands to ed. An attacker could exploit this by tricking a user into applying malicious patches with the patch command.