Description
On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel will take an exception (interrupt), and use the r1 value *from the signal frame* as the kernel stack pointer. As part of the exception entry the content of the signal frame is written to the kernel stack, allowing an attacker to overwrite arbitrary locations with arbitrary values. The exception handling does produce an oops, and a panic if panic_on_oops=1, but only after kernel memory has been over written. This flaw was introduced in commit: "5d176f751ee3 (powerpc: tm: Enable transactional memory (TM) lazily for userspace)" which was merged upstream into v4.9-rc1. Please note that kernels built with CONFIG_PPC_TRANSACTIONAL_MEM=n are not vulnerable.
Published: 2017-10-30
Score: 5.5 Medium
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
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Advisories
Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2017-1516 On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel will take an exception (interrupt), and use the r1 value *from the signal frame* as the kernel stack pointer. As part of the exception entry the content of the signal frame is written to the kernel stack, allowing an attacker to overwrite arbitrary locations with arbitrary values. The exception handling does produce an oops, and a panic if panic_on_oops=1, but only after kernel memory has been over written. This flaw was introduced in commit: "5d176f751ee3 (powerpc: tm: Enable transactional memory (TM) lazily for userspace)" which was merged upstream into v4.9-rc1. Please note that kernels built with CONFIG_PPC_TRANSACTIONAL_MEM=n are not vulnerable.
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-3443-1 Linux kernel vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-3443-2 Linux kernel (HWE) vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-3487-1 Linux kernel vulnerabilities
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Ibm Powerpc Power8 Powerpc Power9
Linux Linux Kernel
Redhat Enterprise Linux
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: mitre

Published:

Updated: 2024-08-05T22:00:39.695Z

Reserved: 2017-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

Link: CVE-2017-1000255

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Deferred

Published: 2017-10-30T20:29:00.230

Modified: 2025-04-20T01:37:25.860

Link: CVE-2017-1000255

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Moderate

Publid Date: 2017-10-09T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2017-1000255 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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Weaknesses