Race Condition Vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Kernel

CVE-2008-2365

Summary

A vulnerability exists within the Linux kernel versions 2.6.9 to 2.6.25 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4, stemming from a race condition in ptrace and utrace support. Local users can exploit this vulnerability by executing a long sequence of PTRACE_ATTACH ptrace calls on another user's process, leading to a denial of service condition. This occurs due to a conflict in handling process attachment and detachment, specifically around the checks for process states, which can cause system instability. This issue does not affect the kernel versions post-2.6.16.x.

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