Synopsis
The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.
Description
Updated kernel packages that resolve several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
This update addresses the following security issues :
* a memory leak in keyctl handling. A local user could use this flaw to deplete kernel memory, eventually leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2009-0031, Important)
* a buffer overflow in the Linux kernel Partial Reliable Stream Control Transmission Protocol (PR-SCTP) implementation. This could, potentially, lead to a denial of service if a Forward-TSN chunk is received with a large stream ID. (CVE-2009-0065, Important)
* a flaw when handling heavy network traffic on an SMP system with many cores. An attacker who could send a large amount of network traffic could create a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5713, Important)
* the code for the HFS and HFS Plus (HFS+) file systems failed to properly handle corrupted data structures. This could, potentially, lead to a local denial of service. (CVE-2008-4933, CVE-2008-5025, Low)
* a flaw was found in the HFS Plus (HFS+) file system implementation.
This could, potentially, lead to a local denial of service when write operations are performed. (CVE-2008-4934, Low)
In addition, these updated packages fix the following bugs :
* when using the nfsd daemon in a clustered setup, kernel panics appeared seemingly at random. These panics were caused by a race condition in the device-mapper mirror target.
* the clock_gettime(CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID, ) syscall returned a smaller timespec value than the result of previous clock_gettime() function execution, which resulted in a negative, and nonsensical, elapsed time value.
* nfs_create_rpc_client was called with a 'flavor' parameter which was usually ignored and ended up unconditionally creating the RPC client with an AUTH_UNIX flavor. This caused problems on AUTH_GSS mounts when the credentials needed to be refreshed. The credops did not match the authorization type, which resulted in the credops dereferencing an incorrect part of the AUTH_UNIX rpc_auth struct.
* when copy_user_c terminated prematurely due to reading beyond the end of the user buffer and the kernel jumped to the exception table entry, the rsi register was not cleared. This resulted in exiting back to user code with garbage in the rsi register.
* the hexdump data in s390dbf traces was incomplete. The length of the data traced was incorrect and the SAN payload was read from a different place then it was written to.
* when using connected mode (CM) in IPoIB on ehca2 hardware, it was not possible to transmit any data.
* when an application called fork() and pthread_create() many times and, at some point, a thread forked a child and then attempted to call the setpgid() function, then this function failed and returned and ESRCH error value.
Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. Note: for this update to take effect, the system must be rebooted.
Solution
Update the affected packages.
Plugin Details
File Name: redhat-RHSA-2009-0264.nasl
Agent: unix
Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus
Risk Information
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Vulnerability Information
CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5.3
Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu
Exploit Ease: Exploits are available
Patch Publication Date: 2/10/2009
Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/5/2008