CVE-2018-16864

An allocation of memory without limits, that could result in the stack clashing with another memory region, was discovered in systemd-journald when a program with long command line arguments calls syslog. A local attacker may use this flaw to crash systemd-journald or escalate privileges.

This issue affects the versions of systemd as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having a security impact of Important because it allows a local attacker to crash systemd-journald or escalate his privileges. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.

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.

To increase the time an attacker needs to exploit this flaw you could override the StartLimitInterval= (called StartLimitIntervalSec in newer systemd versions) and StartLimitBurst= settings. In this way the attack may require much longer to be successful.

To edit the journald service use sudo systemctl edit systemd-journald.service and add:

[Service]
StartLimitInterval=120
StartLimitBurst=3