NetBSD Security Advisory 1999 -008 -- Kernel hang or panic in name lookup under certain circumstances

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===========================================================================
              AUSCERT External Security Bulletin Redistribution
                             
              ESB-1999.048 -- NetBSD Security Advisory 1999-008
       Kernel hang or panic in name lookup under certain circumstances
                                20 April 1999

===========================================================================

The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. has released the following advisory concerning
a vulnerability which may allow unprivileged users to trigger a file-system
locking error, causing the system to panic or hang.

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                 NetBSD Security Advisory 1999-008
                 =================================

Topic:		Kernel hang or panic in name lookup under certain circumstances
Version:	NetBSD 1.3.X, NetBSD-current to 19990409, and
			early versions of NetBSD-1.4_ALPHA
Severity:	In later versions of -current and in 1.4_ALPHA, unprivileged
			users can panic the system.


Abstract
========

Unprivileged users can trigger a file-system locking error, causing the
system to panic or hang.  The following command sequence will trigger
the vulnerability:

	% ln -s ./ test
	% ln -s ./ test


Technical Details
=================

Certain kernel operations, such as creating a symbolic link, request that
the namei() path name resolution routine not unlock the node of the
directory containing the found file, instead returning it to the caller
locked.

When the found file is a symbolic link, this parent must be unlocked
before the symbolic link is looked up. This problem results from the test
to unlock the parent differing from the test to lock the parent. The
difference only manifests itself in the case of a path name which ends
with a symbolic link ending with one or more "/" characters.

NetBSD 1.3.3 and prior hang when this bug is exercised.  NetBSD-current
was enhanced to notice locking problems and thus panics instead of
hanging.


Solutions and Workarounds
=========================

There are no workarounds for this problem.  A patched kernel must be
installed to fix this problem.

A patch is available for NetBSD 1.3.3 which fixes this problem.  You
may find this patch on the NetBSD ftp server:

    ftp://ftp.NetBSD.ORG/pub/NetBSD/misc/security/patches/19990412-vfs_lookup

NetBSD-current since 19990409 is not vulnerable.  Users of NetBSD-current
should upgrade to a source tree later than 19990409.


Thanks To
=========

The NetBSD Project would like to thank Antti Kantee <pooka@iki.fi> and
Matthew Orgass <darkstar@pgh.net> for providing information about this
problem, and William Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org> for providing a
solution.


Revision History
================

	1999/04/12 - initial version


More Information
================

Information about NetBSD and NetBSD security can be found at
http://www.NetBSD.ORG/ and http://www.NetBSD.ORG/Security/.


Copyright 1999, The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

$NetBSD: NetBSD-SA1999-008.txt,v 1.3 1999/04/12 18:58:18 mrg Exp $

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