Friday Squid Blogging: Balloon Squid

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Masayoshi Matsumoto is a “master balloon artist,” and he made a squid (and other animals).

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

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USN-6231-1: Linux kernel (OEM) vulnerabilities

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It was discovered that the XFS file system implementation in the Linux
kernel did not properly perform metadata validation when mounting certain
images. An attacker could use this to specially craft a file system image
that, when mounted, could cause a denial of service (system crash).
(CVE-2023-2124)

It was discovered that the IP-VLAN network driver for the Linux kernel did
not properly initialize memory in some situations, leading to an out-of-
bounds write vulnerability. An attacker could use this to cause a denial of
service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2023-3090)

It was discovered that the DVB Core driver in the Linux kernel did not
properly handle locking events in certain situations. A local attacker
could use this to cause a denial of service (kernel deadlock).
(CVE-2023-31084)

It was discovered that the Ricoh R5C592 MemoryStick card reader driver in
the Linux kernel contained a race condition during module unload, leading
to a use-after-free vulnerability. A local attacker could use this to cause
a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.
(CVE-2023-3141)

Yang Lan discovered that the GFS2 file system implementation in the Linux
kernel could attempt to dereference a null pointer in some situations. An
attacker could use this to construct a malicious GFS2 image that, when
mounted and operated on, could cause a denial of service (system crash).
(CVE-2023-3212)

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Buying Campaign Contributions as a Hack

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The first Republican primary debate has a popularity threshold to determine who gets to appear: 40,000 individual contributors. Now there are a lot of conventional ways a candidate can get that many contributors. Doug Burgum came up with a novel idea: buy them:

A long-shot contender at the bottom of recent polls, Mr. Burgum is offering $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people who donate at least $1 to his campaign. And one lucky donor, as his campaign advertised on Facebook, will have the chance to win a Yeti Tundra 45 cooler that typically costs more than $300—just for donating at least $1.

It’s actually a pretty good idea. He could have spent the money on direct mail, or personalized social media ads, or television ads. Instead, he buys gift cards at maybe two-thirds of face value (sellers calculate the advertising value, the additional revenue that comes from using them to buy something more expensive, and breakage when they’re not redeemed at all), and resells them. Plus, many contributors probably give him more than $1, and he got a lot of publicity over this.

Clever hack.

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