Linux Local kernel vulnerability
SANS has a story on another local kernel vulnerability for linux. I’ve got to say that I typically haven’t looked as much at “local” vulnerabilities on this site as I have talked about remote vulnerabilities. Usually local vulnerabilities are flaws that allow a user that’s already logged into a system to escalate their user rights to control the system. So, IF you allow logins for various users, you definitely need to pay attention to local vulnerabilities.
This is essentially the same type of flaw that was used in the Debian development server compromise from what I can gather. A developer had a weak password and that was either broken or guessed (or discovered) by someone…. that “someone” logged in and found that there were some interesting possibilities to get greater access to the machine.
This vulnerability seems to be in the current kernel release, although SELinux seems to block the exploit – soooooo…. Linuxi that employ SELinux should be less at risk.