Linux 3.16~4.18.8 Affected By Another Potential Local Privilege Escalation Bug

From June of 2014 with Linux 3.16 until last week, the Linux kernel was affected by another potential local privilege escalation bug.

Fortunately, Linus Torvalds fixed it last week prior to taking his leave of absence. But the issue was fixed by Linus in removing the vmacache_flush_all code entirely on the basis of it being expensive, buggy, and unnecessary.

It was then posted to oss-sec on Tuesday that this vmacache code could lead to a a use-after-free situation and potentially local privilege escalation. The vulnerability is now published today as CVE-2018-17182. But if you switch now to the latest Linux kernel stable releases or are riding Linux Git, you should be in good shape.