A flaw was discovered in the way the Linux kernel dealt with paging structures. When the kernel invalidated a paging structure that was not in use locally, it could, in principle, race against another CPU that is switching to a process that uses the paging structure in question. A local user could use a thread running with a stale cached virtual->physical translation to potentially escalate their privileges if the translation in question were writable and the physical page got reused for something critical (for example, a page table).
Find out more about CVE-2016-2069 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.
This issue affects the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. This has been rated as having Moderate security impact and is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/.
This issue affects the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7 and MRG-2. Future Linux kernel updates for the respective releases might address this issue.
| Base Score | 3.7 |
|---|---|
| Base Metrics | AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P |
| Access Vector | Local |
| Access Complexity | High |
| Authentication | None |
| Confidentiality Impact | Partial |
| Integrity Impact | Partial |
| Availability Impact | Partial |
| CVSS3 Base Score | 4.9 |
|---|---|
| CVSS3 Base Metrics | CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L |
| Attack Vector | Local |
| Attack Complexity | High |
| Privileges Required | None |
| User Interaction | None |
| Scope | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | Low |
| Integrity Impact | Low |
| Availability Impact | Low |
Find out more about Red Hat support for the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
| Platform | Errata | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time for NFV (v. 7) (kernel-rt) | RHSA-2016:2584 | 2016-11-03 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (kernel) | RHSA-2017:0817 | 2017-03-21 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (kernel) | RHSA-2016:2574 | 2016-11-03 |
| Platform | Package | State |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 | realtime-kernel | Will not fix |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | kernel | Will not fix |
Vulmon