Serious security vulnerability in Linux kernel found
eWeek | at | by Mike
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Security professionals took note of a critical new vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could enable an attacker to gain root access to a vulnerable machine and take complete control of it. An unknown cracker recently used this weakness to compromise several of the Debian Project's servers, which led to the discovery of the new vulnerability.
This discovery has broad implications for the Linux community. Because the flaw is in the Linux kernel itself, the problem affects virtually every distribution of the operating system and several vendors have confirmed that their products are vulnerable.
According to Symantec, this weakness would allow any local user with shell-level access to the system to escalate his privileges to root. This would allow the attacker to perform just about any task he chose on the machine. Symantec warned that the new flaw could be combined with any number of remote vulnerabilities to allow remote attackers to gain root access, as well.