New Linux Kernel Bugs Uncovered
Fort Lauderdale computer repair technicians will surely take notice at a new report that shows what security experts are calling "critical" security flaws in a version of the Linux kernel used by many popular distributions.
The newly-uncovered bugs allow unauthorized users to read or write to kernel memory locations or to access resources in certain servers.
The problem?
These security breaches could be exploited by malicious users to cause denial-of-service attacks, disclose potentially sensitive information or gain "root" privileges.
The bug affects all versions of the Linux kernel up to Version 2.6.24.1, for which there is a patch. TurboLinux, Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat, Mandriva, Debian and others are affected.
The potential security problems are within three functions in the system call fs/splice.c, according to an advisory from Secunia APS.
Secunia disagreed about the new bugs' seriousness.
Initially, they were giving them a less-critical ranking, although the exploit code for the vulnerabilities has been released publicly on the hacker site milw0rm.com.
Secunia also previously discovered that the number of security bugs in the open source Red Hat Linux operating system and the Firefox browser far outstripped comparable products from Microsoft Corp. last year.
Continuing reading this report in ComputerWorld ...
