NULL pointer dereference in Linux kernel - CVE-2014-8173
Published: June 25, 2024
Vulnerability identifier: #VU93343
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 6.8 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2014-8173
CWE-ID: CWE-476
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local user to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.
The vulnerability exists due to a NULL pointer dereference error within the pmd_none_or_trans_huge_or_clear_bad() function in include/asm-generic/pgtable.h on NUMA systems. A local user can trigger denial of service conditions via a crafted MADV_WILLNEED madvise system call that leverages the absence of a page-table lock.
Affected software
Linux kernel
How to mitigate CVE-2014-8173
Install update from vendor's website.
Linux kernel - update to 3.10.76
External References
- https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ee53664bda169f519ce3c6a22d378f0b946c8178
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1198457
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0290.html
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0694.html
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2015-04/msg00009.html
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=ee53664bda169f519ce3c6a22d378f0b946c8178