CVE-2008-2418 in Solaris
Summary
by MITRE
Race condition in the STREAMS Administrative Driver (sad) in Sun Solaris 10 allows local users to cause a denial of service (panic) via unknown vectors.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/11/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2008-2418 represents a critical race condition flaw within the STREAMS Administrative Driver component of Sun Solaris 10 operating system. This issue resides in the sad module which manages STREAMS administrative functions, creating a potential pathway for local attackers to disrupt system stability. The race condition occurs during concurrent access scenarios where multiple threads or processes attempt to manipulate STREAMS resources simultaneously, leading to unpredictable system behavior and potential kernel panics.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability stems from improper synchronization mechanisms within the STREAMS administrative driver implementation. When multiple concurrent operations target the same STREAMS resource, the lack of adequate locking or atomic operations creates a window where system state becomes inconsistent. This condition allows malicious local users to manipulate the timing and sequence of operations to trigger kernel-level failures. The vulnerability specifically affects the sad driver module which handles administrative functions for STREAMS subsystem, making it particularly dangerous as it operates at kernel level with elevated privileges.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risk to Solaris 10 systems as local users can leverage it to cause system-wide denial of service conditions. The panic state resulting from exploitation can lead to complete system crashes requiring manual reboot, potentially disrupting critical services and applications running on the affected systems. The impact extends beyond simple service interruption as kernel panics can result in data loss, corruption of system state, and extended downtime. Organizations running Solaris 10 environments are particularly vulnerable since this flaw exists in widely deployed operating system versions without adequate protection mechanisms.
Security practitioners should recognize this vulnerability as a classic example of improper concurrency control, aligning with CWE-362 which addresses race conditions in software implementations. The attack vector follows ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for system disruption and T1068 for local privilege escalation opportunities. Mitigation strategies should include immediate patch deployment from Oracle addressing the specific race condition in the sad driver module, implementation of proper access controls to limit local user privileges, and system monitoring for unusual kernel activity patterns. System administrators should also consider implementing additional security measures such as restricting STREAMS access permissions and monitoring for concurrent administrative operations that could trigger the race condition scenario.