CVE-2016-8655

A race condition issue leading to a use-after-free flaw was found in the way the raw packet sockets implementation in the Linux kernel networking subsystem handled synchronization while creating the TPACKET_V3 ring buffer. A local user able to open a raw packet socket (requires the CAP_NET_RAW capability) could use this flaw to elevate their privileges on the system.

This issue does not affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.

This issue does affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2. Future updates for the respective releases will address this issue.

In a default or common use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 this issue does not allow an unprivileged local user elevate their privileges on the system.

In order to exploit this issue the attacker needs CAP_NET_RAW capability, which needs to be granted by the administrator to the attacker's account. Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 does not have unprivileged user namespaces enabled by default, local unprivileged users also cannot abuse namespaces to grant this capability to themselves and elevate their privileges.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.