RHEL 6 : util-linux-ng (RHSA-2011:1691)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 57019

Language:

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-2011:1691 advisory.

The util-linux-ng packages contain a large variety of low-level system utilities that are necessary for a Linux operating system to function.

Multiple flaws were found in the way the mount and umount commands performed mtab (mounted file systems table) file updates. A local, unprivileged user allowed to mount or unmount file systems could use these flaws to corrupt the mtab file and create a stale lock file, preventing other users from mounting and unmounting file systems. (CVE-2011-1675, CVE-2011-1677)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* Due to a hard coded limit of 128 devices, an attempt to run the blkid -c command on more than 128 devices caused blkid to terminate unexpectedly. This update increases the maximum number of devices to 8192 so that blkid no longer crashes in this scenario. (BZ#675999)

* Previously, the swapon -a command did not detect device-mapper devices that were already in use. This update corrects the swapon utility to detect such devices as expected. (BZ#679741)

* Prior to this update, the presence of an invalid line in the /etc/fstab file could cause the umount utility to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. This update applies a patch that corrects this error so that umount now correctly reports invalid lines and no longer crashes.
(BZ#684203)

* Previously, an attempt to use the wipefs utility on a partitioned device caused the utility to terminate unexpectedly with an error. This update adapts wipefs to only display a warning message in this situation.
(BZ#696959)

* When providing information on interprocess communication (IPC) facilities, the ipcs utility could previously display a process owner as a negative number if the user's UID was too large. This update adapts the underlying source code to make sure the UID values are now displayed correctly. (BZ#712158)

* In the installation scriptlets, the uuidd package uses the chkconfig utility to enable and disable the uuidd service. Previously, this package did not depend on the chkconfig package, which could lead to errors during installation if chkconfig was not installed. This update adds chkconfig to the list of dependencies so that such errors no longer occur.
(BZ#712808)

* The previous version of the /etc/udev/rules.d/60-raw.rules file contained a statement that both this file and raw devices are deprecated.
This is no longer true and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel supports this functionality. With this update, the aforementioned file no longer contains this incorrect statement. (BZ#716995)

* Previously, an attempt to use the cfdisk utility to read the default Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 partition layout failed with an error. This update corrects this error and the cfdisk utility can now read the default partition layout as expected. (BZ#723352)

* The previous version of the tailf(1) manual page incorrectly stated that users can use the --lines=NUMBER command line option to limit the number of displayed lines. However, the tailf utility does not allow the use of the equals sign (=) between the option and its argument. This update corrects this error. (BZ#679831)

* The fstab(5) manual page has been updated to clarify that empty lines in the /etc/fstab configuration file are ignored. (BZ#694648)

As well, this update adds the following enhancements:

* A new fstrim utility has been added to the package. This utility allows the root user to discard unused blocks on a mounted file system.
(BZ#692119)

* The login utility has been updated to provide support for failed login attempts that are reported by PAM. (BZ#696731)

* The lsblk utility has been updated to provide additional information about the topology and status of block devices. (BZ#723638)

* The agetty utility has been updated to pass the hostname to the login utility. (BZ#726092)

All users of util-linux-ng are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements.

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: Critical

ID: 57019

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2011-1691.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: 5.9

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Low

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.6

Temporal Score: 3.4

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2011-1677

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.5

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

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

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.3

Threat Score: 8.1

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:U

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libuuid, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:util-linux-ng, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libuuid-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libblkid-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libblkid, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:uuidd

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

Patch Publication Date: 12/6/2011

Vulnerability Publication Date: 4/9/2011

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2011-1675, CVE-2011-1677

RHSA: 2011:1691

Detections

Analytics