RHEL 6 : kernel (RHSA-2018:2250)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 111321

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for kernel.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2018:2250 advisory.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fix(es):

* An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of Load & Store instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory read from address to which a recent memory write has occurred may see an older value and subsequently cause an update into the microprocessor's data cache even for speculatively executed instructions that never actually commit (retire). As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3639, x86 AMD)

Red Hat would like to thank Ken Johnson (Microsoft Security Response Center) and Jann Horn (Google Project Zero) for reporting this issue.

Bug Fix(es):

* If the cifs_reopen_file() function failed to find a file, the pointer to the cifsFileInfo structure was not reinitialized by being set to NULL. Subsequently, the find_writable_file() function used an invalid pointer to cifsFileInfo. Consequently, the operating system terminated unexpectedly. With this update, the underlying source code has been fixed to reinitialize the pointer to cifsFileInfo as expected. As a result, the operating system no longer crashes due to this bug. (BZ#1577086)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL kernel package based on the guidance in RHSA-2018:2250.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?e1c31400

https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/ssbd

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1566890

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2250

https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 111321

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2018-2250.nasl

Version: 1.12

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 7/25/2018

Updated: 11/5/2024

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-3639

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-firmware, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-bootwrapper, cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_eus:6.7, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-perf, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 7/24/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/22/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-3639

CWE: 200

RHSA: 2018:2250