Debian DSA 270-1 Critical: Ptrace Local Escalation Risk

The kernel module loader in Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4 kernels has a flaw
in ptrace. This hole allows local users to obtain root privileges by
using ptrace to attach to a child process that is spawned by the
kernel. Remote exploitation of this hole is not possible.

This advisory only covers kernel packages for the big and little endian MIPS
architectures. Other architectures will be covered by separate advisories.

For the stable distribution (woody) this problem has been fixed in version
2.4.17-0.020226.2.woody1 of kernel-patch-2.4.17-mips (mips+mipsel) and in
version 2.4.19-0.020911.1.woody1 of kernel-patch-2.4.19-mips (mips only).

The old stable distribution (potato) is not affected by this problem
for these architectures since mips and mipsel were first released with
Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody).

For the unstable distribution (sid) this problem has been fixed in
version 2.4.19-0.020911.6 of kernel-patch-2.4.19-mips (mips+mipsel).

We recommend that you upgrade your kernel-images packages immedi...