Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's crypto subsystem, specifically in the caam driver handling HMAC keys. When a key longer than the block size is used, it is copied and then hashed into the actual key. However, the memory allocated for this copy was not properly aligned to the DMA cache, which could cause the hashed key to corrupt adjacent memory.

The issue was that although the memory size was rounded for DMA cache alignment, this rounding was not applied during the actual memory allocation. The fix involved replacing the kmemdup function with kmalloc to allocate a larger, properly aligned buffer, followed by copying the key with memcpy.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can lead to memory corruption when processing long HMAC keys in the Linux kernel's crypto module. Such memory corruption could potentially cause system instability, crashes, or unpredictable behavior.

In some cases, memory corruption vulnerabilities can be exploited to escalate privileges or execute arbitrary code, but the provided information does not specify if this is possible here.

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Mitigation Strategies

The vulnerability is fixed in the Linux kernel by correcting the memory allocation for long HMAC keys in the crypto caam module.

To mitigate this vulnerability, you should update your Linux kernel to a version that includes this fix.

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