CVE-2018-8897 Race condition in n/a

What is CVE-2018-8897?

CVE-2018-8897 is a high-severity vulnerability in Apple Mac Os X, published on 8 May 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A statement in the System Programming Guide of the Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual (SDM) was mishandled in the development of some or all operating-system kernels, resulting in unexpected behavior for #DB exceptions that are deferred by MOV SS or POP SS, as demonstrated by (for example) privilege escalation in Windows, macOS, some Xen configurations, or FreeBSD, or a Linux kernel crash. The MOV to SS and POP SS instructions inhibit interrupts (including NMIs), data breakpoints, and single step trap exceptions until the instruction boundary following the next instruction (SDM Vol. 3A; section 6.8.3). (The inhibited data breakpoints are those on memory accessed by the MOV to SS or POP to SS instruction itself.) Note that debug exceptions are not inhibited by the interrupt enable (EFLAGS.IF) system flag (SDM Vol. 3A; section 2.3). If the instruction following the MOV to SS or POP to SS instruction is an instruction like SYSCALL, SYSENTER, INT 3, etc. that transfers control to the operating system at CPL < 3, the debug exception is delivered after the transfer to CPL < 3 is complete. OS kernels may not expect this order of events and may therefore experience unexpected behavior when it occurs.

Weakness: CWE-362

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-8897?

It affects 11 products.

Products include Apple Mac Os X, Canonical Ubuntu Linux, Citrix Xenserver, Debian Debian Linux, Freebsd Freebsd, Redhat Enterprise Linux Server and 5 more.

How do I fix CVE-2018-8897?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2018-8897 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2018-8897 exists.

Public exploit code: 1 Metasploit module, 3 Exploit-DB entries and 4 proofs of concept on GitHub.

Other vulnerabilities in Apple Mac Os X

• CVE-2014-7169 GNU Bourne-Again Shell (Bash) Arbitrary Code Execution Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2014-6271 GNU Bourne-Again Shell (Bash) Arbitrary Code Execution Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2012-1823 PHP-CGI Query String Parameter Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-30713 Apple macOS Unspecified Exploited High 7.8
• CVE-2019-8526 Apple macOS Use-After-Free Exploited High 7.8

All Apple Mac Os X vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2018-8897, DEBIAN-CVE-2018-8897, GHSA-j2cv-h77g-5p95, RHSA-2018:1349, RHSA-2018:1350, RHSA-2018:1351 and 3 more.