Linux kernel exploit | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Google has added a new security feature to the latest Linux kernels for Android devices to prevent it against code reuse attacks that allow attackers to achieve arbitrary code execution by exploiting control-flow hijacking vulnerabilities. In code reuse attacks, attackers exploit memory corruption bugs (buffer overflows, type confusion, or integer overflows) to take over code pointers stored in memory and repurpose existing code in a way that directs control flow of their choice, resulting in a malicious action. Since Android has a lot of mitigation to prevent direct code injection into its kernel, this code reuse method is particularly popular among hackers to gain code execution with the kernel because of the huge number of function pointers it uses. In an attempt to prevent this attack, Google has now added support for LLVM's Control Flow Integrity (CFI) to Android's kernel as a measure for detecting unusual behaviors of attackers trying to interfere or modify the contr...

A cybersecurity researcher with Google Project Zero has released the details, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a high severity vulnerability that exists in Linux kernel since kernel version 3.16 through 4.18.8. Discovered by white hat hacker Jann Horn, the kernel vulnerability (CVE-2018-17182) is a cache invalidation bug in the Linux memory management subsystem that leads to use-after-free vulnerability, which if exploited, could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the targeted system. The use-after-free (UAF) vulnerabilities are a class of memory corruption bug that can be exploited by unprivileged users to corrupt or alter data in memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system. Linux Kernel Exploit Takes an Hour to Gain Root Access However, Horn says his PoC Linux kernel exploit made available to the public "takes about an hour to run before popping a root shell....

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Security researchers have published the details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits of an integer overflow vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could allow an unprivileged user to gain superuser access to the targeted system. The vulnerability, discovered by cloud-based security and compliance solutions provider Qualys, which has been dubbed "Mutagen Astronomy," affects the kernel versions released between July 2007 and July 2017, impacting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian distributions. The Mutagen Astronomy vulnerability tracked as CVE-2018-14634, is a type of a local privilege escalation issue—one of the most common issues with operating systems as a whole—and exists in the Linux kernel's create_elf_tables() function that operates the memory tables. To successfully exploit this vulnerability, attackers need to have access to the targeted system and run their exploit that leads to a buffer overflow, thereby resulting in the execution of malici...

Another dangerous vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that dates back to 2009 and affects a large number of Linux distros, including Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. The latest Linux kernel flaw ( CVE-2017-2636 ), which existed in the Linux kernel for the past seven years, allows a local unprivileged user to gain root privileges on affected systems or cause a denial of service (system crash). Positive Technologies researcher Alexander Popov discovered a race condition issue in the N_HLDC Linux kernel driver – which is responsible for dealing with High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) data – that leads to double-free vulnerability. " Double Free " is one of the most common memory corruption bug that occurs when the application releases same memory location twice by calling the free() function on the same allocated memory. An unauthenticated attacker may leverage this vulnerability to inject and execute arbitrary code in the security context of curren...

Another privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that dates back to 2005 and affects major distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. Over a decade old Linux Kernel bug ( CVE-2017-6074 ) has been discovered by security researcher Andrey Konovalov in the DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol) implementation using Syzkaller , a kernel fuzzing tool released by Google. The vulnerability is a use-after-free flaw in the way the Linux kernel's "DCCP protocol implementation freed SKB (socket buffer) resources for a DCCP_PKT_REQUEST packet when the IPV6_RECVPKTINFO option is set on the socket." The DCCP double-free vulnerability could allow a local unprivileged user to alter the Linux kernel memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service ( system crash ) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system. "An attacker can control what object that would be and overwrite...

A 5-year-old serious privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that affects almost every distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, and Ubuntu. Over a month back, a nine-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerability, dubbed " Dirty COW ," was discovered in the Linux kernel that affected every distro of the open-source operating system, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu. Now, another Linux kernel vulnerability ( CVE-2016-8655 ) that dates back to 2011 disclosed today could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. Philip Pettersson, the researcher who discovered the flaw, was able to create an exploit to gain a root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (Linux Kernel 4.4) and also defeated SMEP/SMAP (Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention/Supervisor Mode Access Prevention) protection to gain kernel code execution abilities. In ...

A nine-year-old critical vulnerability has been discovered in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system and is actively being exploited in the wild. Dubbed " Dirty COW ," the Linux kernel security flaw (CVE-2016-5195) is a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability, but researchers are taking it extremely seriously due to many reasons. First, it's very easy to develop exploits that work reliably. Secondly, the Dirty COW flaw exists in a section of the Linux kernel, which is a part of virtually every distro of the open-source operating system, including RedHat, Debian, and Ubuntu, released for almost a decade. And most importantly, the researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the Dirty COW vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Dirty COW potentially allows any installed malicious app to gain administrative (root-level) access to a device and completely hijack it within just 5 seconds. Earlier this week, Linus Torvalds admi...

How to Hack an Android device? It is possibly one of the most frequently asked questions on the Internet. Although it's not pretty simple to hack Android devices and gadgets, sometimes you just get lucky to find a backdoor access. Thanks to Allwinner, a Chinese ARM system-on-a-chip maker, which has recently been caught shipping a version of Linux Kernel with an incredibly simple and easy-to-use built-in backdoor. Chinese fabless semiconductor company Allwinner is a leading supplier of application processors that are used in many low-cost Android tablets, ARM-based PCs, set-top boxes, and other electronic devices worldwide. Simple Backdoor Exploit to Hack Android Devices All you need to do to gain root access of an affected Android device is… Send the text " rootmydevice " to any undocumented debugging process. The local privileges escalation  backdoor code for debugging ARM-powered Android devices managed to make its way in shipped firmware after fir...

Last month, I Got a Canon's amazing and powerful video-capable DSLR Camera and was wondering if I could play a hack on it. Yes, Just like last time I installed and run Linux on my PlayStation 3 gaming console and the popular game console, the Nintendo Wii . What If I could port Linux Kernel to my DSLR Camera ?? Well, it's now possible for you to port Linux to your Canon DSLR cameras, thanks to the fine folks behind the well-known third-party software add-on, Magic Lantern . The developers of Magic Lantern have provided some incredible features to DSLR video world for free, with an open-source firmware add-on called Magic Lantern. Magic Lantern is actually an enhancement that works on top of Canon's DSLR firmware to provide professional video features that were lacking in the early video-capable Canon DSLR, including better control over audio, helpful exposure, programmable focus, audio tools and more. However, the latest work by the Magic Lantern team sounds much more e...

A 20 year old critical subtle integer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO), an extremely efficient data compression algorithm that focuses on decompression speed, which is almost five times faster than zlib and bzip compression algorithms. Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) was developed in 1994 by Markus Oberhumer and currently it is one of the most popular and widespread compression algorithm used in the Linux kernel , some Samsung Android mobile devices, other embedded devices and several open-source libraries including OpenVPN, MPlayer2, Libav, FFmpeg. 20 YEAR OLD VULNERABILITY IN LZO ALGORITHM Don A. Bailey, founder and CEO of Lab Mouse Security, who disclosed the technical details of the buffer overrun vulnerability in LZO/LZ4 algorithm, explains that if an attacker carefully craft a piece of compressed data that would run malicious code when the software attempted to decompress it. According to advisory, if buffers of 16MB or more ...