RHEL 6 : kernel-rt (RHSA-2018:2789)

high Nessus Plugin ID 117816

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Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2018:2789 advisory.

The kernel-rt packages provide the Real Time Linux Kernel, which enables fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements.

Security Fix(es):

* A flaw named SegmentSmack was found in the way the Linux kernel handled specially crafted TCP packets. A remote attacker could use this flaw to trigger time and calculation expensive calls to tcp_collapse_ofo_queue() and tcp_prune_ofo_queue() functions by sending specially modified packets within ongoing TCP sessions which could lead to a CPU saturation and hence a denial of service on the system.
Maintaining the denial of service condition requires continuous two-way TCP sessions to a reachable open port, thus the attacks cannot be performed using spoofed IP addresses. (CVE-2018-5390)

Red Hat would like to thank Juha-Matti Tilli (Aalto University - Department of Communications and Networking and Nokia Bell Labs) for reporting this issue.

Bug Fix(es):

* The kernel-rt packages have been upgraded to the 3.10.0-693.39.1 source tree, which provides a number of bug fixes over the previous version. (BZ#1616431)

* Previously, preemption was enabled too early after a context switch. If a task was migrated to another CPU after a context switch, a mismatch between CPU and runqueue during load balancing sometimes occurred.
Consequently, a runnable task on an idle CPU failed to run, and the operating system became unresponsive.
This update disables preemption in the schedule_tail() function. As a result, CPU migration during post- schedule processing no longer occurs, which prevents the above mismatch. The operating system no longer hangs due to this bug. (BZ#1618466)

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-rt package based on the guidance in RHSA-2018:2789.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 117816

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2018-2789.nasl

Version: 1.11

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 9/28/2018

Updated: 6/3/2024

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-5390

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.5

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-trace-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-vanilla-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-firmware, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-trace, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-vanilla

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/25/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/6/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-5390

CWE: 400

RHSA: 2018:2789

Detections

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