Detections
Analytics

RHEL 5 / 6 : expat (RHSA-2012:0731)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 59491

Language:

Synopsis

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

Description

Updated expat packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

Expat is a C library written by James Clark for parsing XML documents.

A denial of service flaw was found in the implementation of hash arrays in Expat. An attacker could use this flaw to make an application using Expat consume an excessive amount of CPU time by providing a specially crafted XML file that triggers multiple hash function collisions. To mitigate this issue, randomization has been added to the hash function to reduce the chance of an attacker successfully causing intentional collisions. (CVE-2012-0876)

A memory leak flaw was found in Expat. If an XML file processed by an application linked against Expat triggered a memory re-allocation failure, Expat failed to free the previously allocated memory. This could cause the application to exit unexpectedly or crash when all available memory is exhausted. (CVE-2012-1148)

All Expat users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. After installing the updated packages, applications using the Expat library must be restarted for the update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected expat, expat-debuginfo and / or expat-devel packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012:0731

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2012-1148

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2012-0876

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 59491

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2012-0731.nasl

Version: 1.24

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 6/14/2012

Updated: 1/14/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.7

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:expat-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:expat, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:expat-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6.2

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: 6/13/2012

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/3/2012

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-0876, CVE-2012-1148

BID: 52379

RHSA: 2012:0731