A week ago we covered MS12-042 ("Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2711167)") on the monthly Microsoft patch update cycle. This Microsoft advisory includes two vulnerabilities: CVE-2012-0217 and CVE-2012-1515 (VMware related).

Unfortunately, the official CVE-2012-0217 only makes references to Microsoft Windows OS, but other environments are also affected by this local privilege escalation vulnerability associated to 64-bit Intel processors. From the US-CERT note: "Some 64-bit operating systems and virtualization software running on Intel CPU hardware are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack. The vulnerability may be exploited for local privilege escalation or a guest-to-host virtual machine escape." In particular, it affects FreeBSD or Xen (RedHat, SUSE, etc).

More details at "Vulnerability Note VU#649219: SYSRET 64-bit operating system privilege escalation vulnerability on Intel CPU hardware".

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Raul Siles
Founder and Senior Security Analyst with Taddong
www.taddong.com