A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's nested NMI handler and espfix64 functionalities interacted during NMI processing. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
Find out more about CVE-2015-3290 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.
This issue does not affect the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 since they did not backport the nested NMI handler and espfix64 functionalities.
This issue does not affect the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 since they did not backport the espfix64 functionality and also did not backport upstream commit e00b12e64be9a3 that allowed an unprivileged local user to re-enable NMIs from the NMI handler.
NOTE: The following CVSS v2 metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
| Base Score | 7.2 |
|---|---|
| Base Metrics | AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C |
| Access Vector | Local |
| Access Complexity | Low |
| Authentication | None |
| Confidentiality Impact | Complete |
| Integrity Impact | Complete |
| Availability Impact | Complete |
Find out more about Red Hat support for the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
| Platform | Package | State |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 | realtime-kernel | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | kernel-rt | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | kernel | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | kernel | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | kernel | Not affected |
Vulmon