RHEL 5 : kernel (RHSA-2011:1479)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 56974

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Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2011:1479 advisory.

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

This update fixes the following security issues:

* Using PCI passthrough without interrupt remapping support allowed Xen hypervisor guests to generate MSI interrupts and thus potentially inject traps. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host or possibly escalate their privileges on the host. The fix for this issue can prevent PCI passthrough working and guests starting. Refer to Red Hat Bugzilla bug 715555 for details. (CVE-2011-1898, Important)

* A flaw was found in the way CIFS (Common Internet File System) shares with DFS referrals at their root were handled. An attacker on the local network who is able to deploy a malicious CIFS server could create a CIFS network share that, when mounted, would cause the client system to crash.
(CVE-2011-3363, Moderate)

* A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's key management facility handled user-defined key types. A local, unprivileged user could use the keyctl utility to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-4110, Moderate)

* A flaw in the way memory containing security-related data was handled in tpm_read() could allow a local, unprivileged user to read the results of a previously run TPM command. (CVE-2011-1162, Low)

* A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux kernel's HFS file system implementation. A local attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by mounting a disk that contains a specially-crafted HFS file system with a corrupted MDB extent record. (CVE-2011-2203, Low)

* The I/O statistics from the taskstats subsystem could be read without any restrictions. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to gather confidential information, such as the length of a password used in a process. (CVE-2011-2494, Low)

Red Hat would like to thank Yogesh Sharma for reporting CVE-2011-3363;
Peter Huewe for reporting CVE-2011-1162; Clement Lecigne for reporting CVE-2011-2203; and Vasiliy Kulikov of Openwall for reporting CVE-2011-2494.

This update also fixes several bugs and adds one enhancement. Documentation for these changes will be available shortly from the Technical Notes document linked to in the References section.

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues, and fix the bugs and add the enhancement noted in the Technical Notes. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

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

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

Solution

Update the affected packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 56974

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2011-1479.nasl

Version: 1.21

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 11/30/2011

Updated: 3/20/2025

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.0

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.4

Temporal Score: 5.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:A/AC:M/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2011-1898

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Temporal Score: 5.9

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

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2011-3363

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen

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: 11/29/2011

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/12/2011

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2011-1162, CVE-2011-1898, CVE-2011-2203, CVE-2011-2494, CVE-2011-3363, CVE-2011-4110

BID: 48236, 48515, 49626, 50314, 50755, 50764

CWE: 284, 476

RHSA: 2011:1479

Detections

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