The virtual memory implementation in Linux kernel 2.6.x allows local users to cause a denial of service (panic) by running lsof a large number of times in a way that produces a heavy system load.

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel are now available.

This security advisory has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The Linux kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system.

These new kernel packages contain fixes for the security issues described below :

* a flaw in the IPv6 implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (infinite loop and crash) (CVE-2005-2973, important)

* a flaw in the bridge implementation that allowed a remote user to cause forwarding of spoofed packets via poisoning of the forwarding table with already dropped frames (CVE-2005-3272, moderate)

* a flaw in the atm module that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (panic) via certain socket calls (CVE-2005-3359, important)

* a flaw in the NFS client implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (panic) via O_DIRECT writes (CVE-2006-0555, important)

* a difference in 'sysretq' operation of EM64T (as opposed to Opteron) processors that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (crash) upon return from certain system calls (CVE-2006-0741 and CVE-2006-0744, important)

* a flaw in the keyring implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (OOPS) (CVE-2006-1522, important)

* a flaw in IP routing implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (panic) via a request for a route for a multicast IP (CVE-2006-1525, important)

* a flaw in the SCTP-netfilter implementation that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) (CVE-2006-1527, important)

* a flaw in the sg driver that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (crash) via a dio transfer to memory mapped (mmap) IO space (CVE-2006-1528, important)

* a flaw in the threading implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (panic) (CVE-2006-1855, important)

* two missing LSM hooks that allowed a local user to bypass the LSM by using readv() or writev() (CVE-2006-1856, moderate)

* a flaw in the virtual memory implementation that allowed local user to cause a denial of service (panic) by using the lsof command (CVE-2006-1862, important)

* a directory traversal vulnerability in smbfs that allowed a local user to escape chroot restrictions for an SMB-mounted filesystem via '..\\' sequences (CVE-2006-1864, moderate)

* a flaw in the ECNE chunk handling of SCTP that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (panic) (CVE-2006-2271, moderate)

* a flaw in the handling of COOKIE_ECHO and HEARTBEAT control chunks of SCTP that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (panic) (CVE-2006-2272, moderate)

* a flaw in the handling of DATA fragments of SCTP that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (infinite recursion and crash) (CVE-2006-2274, moderate)

All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade their kernels to the packages associated with their machine architectures and configurations as listed in this erratum.

The remote CentOS system is missing a security update which has been documented in Red Hat advisory RHSA-2006-0493.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
21997	CentOS 4 : kernel (CESA-2006:0493)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high
21592	RHEL 4 : kernel (RHSA-2006:0493)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
801418	CentOS RHSA-2006-0493 Security Check	Log Correlation Engine	Generic	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2006-1862

medium

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high