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Exploiting Linux sock_sendpage() NULL Pointer Dereference on Power

Sep 10, 2009

We released a third and final version of the exploit. The third version has complete support for i386, x86_64, ppc, and ppc64; uses the personality trick published by Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes; uses the TOC pointer workaround for data items addressing on ppc64 (i.e., functions in exploit code and libc can be referenced); and for SELinux-enforced systems, has improved search for domains configured to allow mmap_zero it can transition to.

Sep 7, 2009

We released a second version of the exploit. The second version also works with Linux kernel versions that have copy-on-write (COW) credentials (e.g., Fedora 11), and for SELinux-enforced systems, it automatically searches the SELinux policy rules for domains configured to allow mmap_zero it can transition to, and tries to exploit the vulnerability using these domains.

We wrote an exploit for the Linux kernel sock_sendpage NULL pointer dereference vulnerability, discovered by Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes, to demonstrate the exploitability of this vulnerability on Linux running on Power/Cell BE architecture -based processors.