CVE-2005-0400

A local user can exploit this by creating a new directory on an ext2 filesystem. When `ext2_make_empty()` allocates a block for the new directory entry, uninitialized kernel memory (which may contain sensitive data from prior use) is written to disk without being zeroed out [ref_id=1]. The attacker can then read the raw block from the disk to recover the leaked information.

The vulnerability resides in the `ext2_make_empty()` function in the ext2 filesystem code. This function creates a block for a new directory entry but does not initialize the memory before writing it to disk [ref_id=1].

The patch provided is the Linux 2.6.12 version bump and does not show the actual code fix for this vulnerability. According to the reference write-up [ref_id=1], the proposed fix involves properly initializing the memory in the `ext2_make_empty()` function before writing the block to disk, ensuring that no uninitialized kernel memory is exposed. The advisory notes that a patch was included in Linux 2.6.11.6 to address this issue.