Linux: two critical bugs found in udev subsystem code

14th May 2009

udev is the subsystem code of Linux similar to Windows Devices Manager by the functionality. Recently, two serious vulnerabilities have been found in it.
The former of them enables a local attacker to gain root privileges by sending to udev a specially designed netlink-message asking for the creation of accessible to all users /dev file, duplicating the existing block device (for example, the root file system sector)/ The other vulnerability concerns integer overflow in the utility for transferring control commands to udev. It allows transmitting specially designed cases and, thus, cause a denial of serving the udev subsystem and theoretically implement its own code with higher privileges.
These two vulnerabilities are confirmed in all supported versions of Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu.

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