RHEL 6 : kernel (RHSA-2012:1042)

high Nessus Plugin ID 64044

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Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2012:1042 advisory.

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

This update fixes the following security issues:

* A local, unprivileged user could use an integer overflow flaw in drm_mode_dirtyfb_ioctl() to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2012-0044, Important)

* It was found that the kvm_vm_ioctl_assign_device() function in the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) subsystem of a Linux kernel did not check if the user requesting device assignment was privileged or not. A local, unprivileged user on the host could assign unused PCI devices, or even devices that were in use and whose resources were not properly claimed by the respective drivers, which could result in the host crashing.
(CVE-2011-4347, Moderate)

* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's XFS file system implementation handled on-disk Access Control Lists (ACLs). A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges by mounting a specially-crafted disk.
(CVE-2012-0038, Moderate)

* It was found that the Linux kernel's register set (regset) common infrastructure implementation did not check if the required get and set handlers were initialized. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by performing a register set operation with a ptrace() PTRACE_SETREGSET or PTRACE_GETREGSET request. (CVE-2012-1097, Moderate)

* A race condition was found in the Linux kernel's memory management subsystem in the way pmd_none_or_clear_bad(), when called with mmap_sem in read mode, and Transparent Huge Pages (THP) page faults interacted. A privileged user in a KVM guest with the ballooning functionality enabled could potentially use this flaw to crash the host. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system. (CVE-2012-1179, Moderate)

Red Hat would like to thank Chen Haogang for reporting CVE-2012-0044; Sasha Levin for reporting CVE-2011-4347; Wang Xi for reporting CVE-2012-0038; and H. Peter Anvin for reporting CVE-2012-1097.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* When a RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) adapter with active RoCE communications was taken down suddenly (either by adapter failure or the intentional shutdown of the interface), the ongoing RoCE communications could cause the kernel to panic and render the machine unusable. A patch has been provided to protect the kernel in this situation and to pass an error up to the application still using the interface after it has been taken down instead. (BZ#799944)

* The fix for Red Hat Bugzilla bug 713494, released via RHSA-2011:0928, introduced a regression. Attempting to change the state of certain features, such as GRO (Generic Receive Offload) or TSO (TCP segment offloading), for a 10 Gigabit Ethernet card that is being used in a virtual LAN (VLAN) resulted in a kernel panic. (BZ#816974)

* If a new file was created on a Network File System version 4 (NFSv4) share, the ownership was set to nfsnobody (-2) until it was possible to upcall to the idmapper. As a consequence, subsequent file system operations could incorrectly use -2 for the user and group IDs for the given file, causing certain operations to fail. In reported cases, this issue also caused Viminfo file is not writable errors for users running Vim with files on an NFSv4 share. (BZ#820960)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. 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 RHEL kernel package based on the guidance in RHSA-2012:1042.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 64044

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2012-1042.nasl

Version: 1.25

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 1/24/2013

Updated: 4/15/2025

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: 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-2012-1097

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 6.8

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-firmware, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-bootwrapper, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_eus:6.1, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf

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: 6/26/2012

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/17/2012

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2011-4347, CVE-2012-0038, CVE-2012-0044, CVE-2012-1097, CVE-2012-1179

BID: 50811, 51371, 51380, 52274, 52533

CWE: 190

RHSA: 2012:1042

Detections

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