The kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, when running on SMP systems, allows local users to cause a denial of service (deadlock) by running the shmat function on an shm at the same time that shmctl is removing that shm (IPC_RMID), which prevents a spinlock from being unlocked.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2006:0710 :

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 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 IPC shared-memory implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (deadlock) that resulted in freezing the system (CVE-2006-4342, Important)

* an information leak in the copy_from_user() implementation on s390 and s390x platforms that allowed a local user to read arbitrary kernel memory (CVE-2006-5174, Important)

* a flaw in the ATM subsystem affecting systems with installed ATM hardware and configured ATM support that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (panic) by accessing socket buffer memory after it has been freed (CVE-2006-4997, Moderate)

* 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 mprotect system call that allowed enabling write permission for a read-only attachment of shared memory (CVE-2006-2071, Moderate)

* a flaw in the DVD handling of the CDROM driver that could be used together with a custom built USB device to gain root privileges (CVE-2006-2935, Moderate)

In addition to the security issues described above, a bug fix for a clock skew problem (which could lead to unintended keyboard repeat under X11) was also included. The problem only occurred when running the 32-bit x86 kernel on 64-bit dual-core x86_64 hardware.

Note: The kernel-unsupported package contains various drivers and modules that are unsupported and therefore might contain security problems that have not been addressed.

All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users are advised to upgrade their kernels to the packages associated with their machine architecture and configurations as listed in this erratum.

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 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 IPC shared-memory implementation that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (deadlock) that resulted in freezing the system (CVE-2006-4342, Important)

* an information leak in the copy_from_user() implementation on s390 and s390x platforms that allowed a local user to read arbitrary kernel memory (CVE-2006-5174, Important)

* a flaw in the ATM subsystem affecting systems with installed ATM hardware and configured ATM support that allowed a remote user to cause a denial of service (panic) by accessing socket buffer memory after it has been freed (CVE-2006-4997, Moderate)

* 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 mprotect system call that allowed enabling write permission for a read-only attachment of shared memory (CVE-2006-2071, Moderate)

* a flaw in the DVD handling of the CDROM driver that could be used together with a custom built USB device to gain root privileges (CVE-2006-2935, Moderate)

In addition to the security issues described above, a bug fix for a clock skew problem (which could lead to unintended keyboard repeat under X11) was also included. The problem only occurred when running the 32-bit x86 kernel on 64-bit dual-core x86_64 hardware.

Note: The kernel-unsupported package contains various drivers and modules that are unsupported and therefore might contain security problems that have not been addressed.

All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users are advised to upgrade their kernels to the packages associated with their machine architecture 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-2006-0710.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
67413	Oracle Linux 3 : kernel (ELSA-2006-0710)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	high
22918	RHEL 3 : kernel (RHSA-2006:0710)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
22879	CentOS 3 : kernel (CESA-2006:0710)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high
801423	CentOS RHSA-2006-0710 Security Check	Log Correlation Engine	Generic	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2006-4342

medium

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high

high