RHEL 6 : ruby (RHSA-2011:1581)

high Nessus Plugin ID 57017

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Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2011:1581 advisory.

Ruby is an extensible, interpreted, object-oriented, scripting language. It has features to process text files and to do system management tasks.

It was found that Ruby did not reinitialize the PRNG (pseudorandom number generator) after forking a child process. This could eventually lead to the PRNG returning the same result twice. An attacker keeping track of the values returned by one child process could use this flaw to predict the values the PRNG would return in other child processes (as long as the parent process persisted). (CVE-2011-3009)

A flaw was found in the Ruby SecureRandom module. When using the SecureRandom.random_bytes class, the PRNG state was not modified after forking a child process. This could eventually lead to SecureRandom.random_bytes returning the same string more than once. An attacker keeping track of the strings returned by one child process could use this flaw to predict the strings SecureRandom.random_bytes would return in other child processes (as long as the parent process persisted).
(CVE-2011-2705)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* The ruby package has been upgraded to upstream point release 1.8.7-p352, which provides a number of bug fixes over the previous version. (BZ#706332)

* The MD5 message-digest algorithm is not a FIPS-approved algorithm.
Consequently, when a Ruby script attempted to calculate an MD5 checksum in FIPS mode, the interpreter terminated unexpectedly. This bug has been fixed and an exception is now raised in the described scenario. (BZ#717709)

* Due to inappropriately handled line continuations in the mkconfig.rb source file, an attempt to build the ruby package resulted in unexpected termination. An upstream patch has been applied to address this issue and the ruby package can now be built properly. (BZ#730287)

* When the 32-bit ruby-libs library was installed on a 64-bit machine, the mkmf library failed to load various modules necessary for building Ruby-related packages. This bug has been fixed and mkmf now works properly in the described scenario. (BZ#674787)

* Previously, the load paths for scripts and binary modules were duplicated on the i386 architecture. Consequently, an ActiveSupport test failed. With this update, the load paths are no longer stored in duplicates on the i386 architecture. (BZ#722887)

This update also adds the following enhancement:

* With this update, SystemTap probes have been added to the ruby package.
(BZ#673162)

All users of ruby are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues and add this enhancement.

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: High

ID: 57017

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2011-1581.nasl

Version: 1.18

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 12/6/2011

Updated: 4/14/2025

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: 5.2

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Low

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.7

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2011-3009

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:ruby-irb, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-libs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-static, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-docs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-tcltk, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-ri, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:ruby-rdoc

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: 12/6/2011

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/5/2011

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2011-2705, CVE-2011-3009

BID: 49015, 49126

RHSA: 2011:1581

Detections

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