CVE-2019-5023 Memory corruption in PaX
A memory leak in the PaX kernel patch allows attackers to crash the system by triggering a read from /dev/kmem with an invalid address.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2019-5023?
CVE-2019-5023 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in PaX, published on 31 Oct 2019. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An exploitable vulnerability exists in the grsecurity PaX patch for the function read_kmem, in PaX from version pax-linux-4.9.8-test1 to 4.9.24-test7, grsecurity official from version grsecurity-3.1-4.9.8-201702060653 to grsecurity-3.1-4.9.24-201704252333, grsecurity unofficial from version v4.9.25-unofficialgrsec to v4.9.74-unofficialgrsec. PaX adds a temp buffer to the read_kmem function, which is never freed when an invalid address is supplied. This results in a memory leakage that can lead to a crash of the system. An attacker needs to induce a read to /dev/kmem using an invalid address to exploit this vulnerability.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-5023?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Opensrcsec Grsecurity, Opensrcsec Pax.
How do I fix CVE-2019-5023?
No fix has been published for CVE-2019-5023 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2019-5023 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-5023 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-vjqv-f876-5p65.