Privilege escalation in Linux kernel - CVE-2018-12714

Detailed vulnerability description

The vulnerability allows a local attacker to gain elevated privileges on the target system.

The vulnerability exists due to the filter-parsing component, as defined in the kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c source code file of the affected software, could be called without a filter, which would result in an N=0 case. A local attacker can make perf_event_open and mmap system calls that submit malicious input, trigger a slab out-of-bounds write condition in the predicate_parse function and cause the system to crash or execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may result in complete system compromise.

How to mitigate CVE-2018-12714

Sources

• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200019