October 4, 2023

CVE-2023-4911: High Severity "Looney Tunables" Vulnerability Impacting Open Source Software

Operating Systems
Security

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On 10/3/2023, Red Hat and Qualys issued a coordinated release regarding a new high severity CVE-2023-4911, nicknamed Looney Tunables. The vulnerability was discovered by the Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU) and described as a buffer overflow vulnerability in GNU C Library’s dynamic loader’s processing of the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable. 
 

What is the impact of CVE-2023-4911? 

According to a blog published by Qualys on 10/3: “The presence of a buffer overflow vulnerability in the dynamic loader’s handling of the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable poses significant risks to numerous Linux distributions. This environment variable, intended to fine-tune and optimize applications linked with glibc, is an essential tool for developers and system administrators. Its misuse or exploitation broadly affects system performance, reliability, and security.”

According to NIST, CVE-2023-4911 is still currently awaiting analysis however, Red Hat, Inc has classified this CVE with a high-severity CVSS 3 base score of 7.8. 

 

OpenLogic Patch for CVE-2023-4911 Available

OpenLogic has published a new patch to address this CentOS 8 vulnerability. OpenLogic customers with CentOS 8 Long-Term Support receive patches for high-severity CVEs post end-of-life and this one requires immediate attention. OpenLogic customers can access the latest patch in the OpenLogic private repository. 

Need CentOS 8 Long-Term Support? 

OpenLogic LTS provides support for five years past EOL, with technical support and professional services. With LTS support, you can open up unlimited support tickets to ask questions about how CVEs affecting CentOS, like CVE-2023-4911, will impact your infrastructure. 

Get LTS for CentOS 8

Additional Resources

Javier Perez 2023 Headshot

Javier Perez

Chief OSS Evangelist and Senior Director of Product Management, Perforce Software

Passionate about technology and open source software, Javier is the Chief Open Source Evangelist and Senior Director of Product Management at Perforce Software. He is responsible for technical thought leadership and advocacy for open source software while driving the OpenLogic by Perforce offering. Javier has been in the application development, open source, cloud, app security, AI, SaaS, and mobile industries for 25+ years. As a speaker and blogger, he has had the opportunity to present at industry events all over the world. Javier holds an honors degree in Computer Systems and an MBA.