A vulnerability has been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problem:
Alexander Viro discovered a race condition in the fcntl code that may permit local users on multi-processor systems to execute parallel code paths that are otherwise prohibited and gain re-ordered access to the descriptor table.
For the stable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch4.
For the unstable distribution(sid), this problem has been fixed in version 2.6.25-2.
We recommend that you upgrade your linux-2.6, fai-kernels, and user-mode-linux packages.
MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.