RHEL 5 : kvm (RHSA-2009:1465)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 63897

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for kvm.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2009:1465 advisory.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. KVM is a Linux kernel module built for the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel.

The kvm_emulate_hypercall() implementation was missing a check for the Current Privilege Level (CPL). A local, unprivileged user in a virtual machine could use this flaw to cause a local denial of service or escalate their privileges within that virtual machine. (CVE-2009-3290)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* non-maskable interrupts (NMI) were not supported on systems with AMD processors. As a consequence, Windows Server 2008 R2 guests running with more than one virtual CPU assigned on systems with AMD processors would hang at the Windows shut down screen when a restart was attempted. This update adds support for NMI filtering on systems with AMD processors, allowing clean restarts of Windows Server 2008 R2 guests running with multiple virtual CPUs. (BZ#520694)

* significant performance issues for guests running 64-bit editions of Windows. This update improves performance for guests running 64-bit editions of Windows. (BZ#521793)

* Windows guests may have experienced time drift. (BZ#521794)

* removing the Red Hat VirtIO Ethernet Adapter from a guest running Windows Server 2008 R2 caused KVM to crash. With this update, device removal should not cause this issue. (BZ#524557)

All KVM users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues. Note: The procedure in the Solution section must be performed before this update takes effect.

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

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

Solution

Update the RHEL kvm package based on the guidance in RHSA-2009:1465.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?47e8f98f

https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=520694

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=521793

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=521794

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524124

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524557

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009:1465

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 63897

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2009-1465.nasl

Version: 1.16

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 1/24/2013

Updated: 11/4/2024

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 5.3

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2009-3290

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 4.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/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:kvm-tools, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kvm, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kmod-kvm, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kvm-qemu-img

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: 9/29/2009

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/22/2009

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2009-3290

BID: 36512

CWE: 648

RHSA: 2009:1465