Executive brief
A vulnerability in the syslog logging service allows a local user to cause a denial of service. By flooding the system with a large volume of unnecessary log messages, an attacker can overwhelm the logging facility. This can lead to disk space exhaustion or system instability, preventing the recording of critical security events and impacting overall system operations.
Technical details
The syslog daemon is vulnerable to a resource exhaustion denial of service. A local attacker can exploit this by generating a high volume of log messages, which the daemon attempts to process and write to disk. This flood of data can consume available CPU cycles and disk space, potentially leading to the failure of the logging service or the underlying operating system. The attack requires local access to the system to generate the message traffic. Mitigation typically involves implementing rate-limiting on log generation or configuring disk quotas for log directories.
Affected products
- unknown syslog
Timeline
- 1997-01-01: disclosed
- 1997-01-01: advisory