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Jan 18, 2023

A new privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel, enables a local attacker to execute malware on vulnerable systems

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

A new privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel by researcher Davide Ornaghi. This vulnerability might enable a local attacker to execute code on vulnerable computers with elevated rights if the kernel is installed on those systems. Additionally, Davide published the proof-of-concept and the write-up. The vulnerability, which has been assigned the tracking number CVE-2023–0179, is a stack-based buffer overflow that exists in the Netfilter subsystem. An authorized attacker might exploit this issue to get elevated privileges as root if the attacker executed a program that had been carefully written for the purpose.

The Linux kernel has a framework known as netfilter that enables a variety of networking-related actions to be performed in the form of individualized handlers. This may be accomplished by filtering incoming network packets. Netfilter provides the functionality necessary for directing packets through a network and preventing packets from reaching sensitive locations within a network by offering a variety of functions and operations for packet filtering, network address translation, and port translation. [1] These features allow Netfilter to provide the functionality required for directing packets through a network.

“The vulnerability consists of a stack buffer overflow caused by an integer underflow vulnerability within the nft payload copy vlan function,” which is triggered with nft payload expressions “as long as a VLAN tag is present in the current skb,” according to the description of the flaw.

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