Denial of service in Linux kernel

1) Resource exhaustion

EUVDB-ID: #VU17858

Risk: Low

CVSSv3.1: 5.7 [CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2018-20784

CWE-ID: CWE-400 - Resource exhaustion

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a local user to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to an error in resource management within the update_blocked_averages function in kernel/sched/fair.c when processing leaf cfs_rq's. A local user can cause resource exhaustion and perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Linux kernel: 4.20 - 4.20.1

External links

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=c40f7d74c741a907cfaeb73a7697081881c497d0
http://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.20.2
http://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c40f7d74c741a907cfaeb73a7697081881c497d0

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.