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Date:	Tue, 3 Nov 1998 21:11:12 -0500
From:	"Brandon S. Allbery" <allbery@ECE.CMU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: head -c 32 /dev/socksys caused panic?
To:	BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG

+----- From: A Fortunate K-9 <a42n8k9@REDROSE.NET>
| I was experimenting with different sources of random data when I ran the
| following command "head -c 32 /dev/socksys" only to find my system go into
| a complete panic, crash, and reboot.  I should note that I was logged in as
| an ordinary user, and the system is Slackware 2.0.34.
|
| Has anyone else heard of something like this?
+--->8

/dev/socksys is part of iBCS support; I'll forward this to the ibcs dev
list.  I doubt that anyone paid much attention to it being accessed from
programs not using the ibcs call gate, although if you don't have ibcs
loaded it's a kernel problem.

I don't think anything other than a denial of service due to the panic is
possible from this, but I haven't examined the most recent TLI emulation
code.

--
brandon s. allbery      [os/2][linux][solaris][japh]     allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator         [WAY too many hats]           allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering
carnegie mellon university                         (bsa@kf8nh is still valid.)