CVE-2019-8980

A memory leak in the kernel_read_file function in fs/exec.c in the Linux kernel through 4.20.11 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by triggering vfs_read failures.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-04/msg00052.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/107120
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/05/msg00002.html
• https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K56480726
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3930-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3930-2/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-2/
• https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel%40vger.kernel.org/msg1935698.html
• https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel%40vger.kernel.org/msg1935705.html