Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2024-50205: Linux Kernel division by zero in ALSA firewire-lib

CVE-2024-50205 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.5 · Published 2024-11-08

Technologies: Linux Kernel. Vendors: Linux.

Executive brief

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's audio subsystem for FireWire devices could allow a local user to crash the system. The issue occurs when the system attempts to process specific audio parameters, leading to a mathematical error that halts the operating system. This primarily impacts system availability and could be used to cause a denial-of-service.

Technical details

A division-by-zero vulnerability exists in the apply_constraint_to_size() function within sound/firewire/amdtp-stream.c of the Linux kernel. The 'step' variable, used as a divisor in the roundup() and rounddown() macros, is initialized to zero and may remain zero if no interval parameters satisfy the snd_interval_test() condition. A local attacker can trigger this condition to cause a kernel panic. The issue was introduced in commit 826b5de90c0b and has been fixed by adding a check to return -EINVAL if 'step' is zero.

Affected products

  • Linux Linux Kernel 4.20 to 5.4.284, 5.5 to 5.10.228, 5.11 to 5.15.169, 5.16 to 6.1.114, 6.2 to 6.6.58, 6.7 to 6.11.5

Timeline

  • 2024-10-21: patched: Initial fix in mainline kernel tree
  • 2024-11-08: disclosed: CVE assigned and published

References

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