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RHEL 6 : kernel (RHSA-2014:1365)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 79054

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Synopsis

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

Description

Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 Extended Update Support.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

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

* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled reference counting when requeuing futexes during futex_wait().
A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to zero out the reference counter of an inode or an mm struct that backs up the memory area of the futex, which could lead to a use-after-free flaw, resulting in a system crash or, potentially, privilege escalation.
(CVE-2014-0205, Important)

The security impact of this issue was discovered by Mateusz Guzik of Red Hat.

This update also fixes the following bugs :

* A rare race between the file system unmount code and the file system notification code could lead to a kernel panic. With this update, a series of patches has been applied to the kernel to prevent this problem. (BZ#1130628)

* Previously, recovery of a double-degraded RAID6 array could, under certain circumstances, result in data corruption. This could happen because the md driver was using an optimization that is safe to use only for single-degraded arrays. This update ensures that this optimization is skipped during the recovery of double-degraded RAID6 arrays. (BZ#1131410)

* Later Intel CPUs added a new 'Condition Changed' bit to the MSR_CORE_PERF_GLOBAL_STATUS register. Previously, the kernel falsely assumed that this bit indicates a performance interrupt, which prevented other NMI handlers from running and executing. To fix this problem, a patch has been applied to the kernel to ignore this bit in the perf code, enabling other NMI handlers to run. (BZ#1134695)

* Previously, certain network device drivers did not accept ethtool commands right after they were mounted. As a consequence, the current setting of the specified device driver was not applied and an error message was returned. The ETHTOOL_DELAY variable has been added, which makes sure the ethtool utility waits for some time before it tries to apply the options settings, thus fixing the bug. (BZ#1138300)

All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014:1365

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2014-0205

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 79054

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2014-1365.nasl

Version: 1.18

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/8/2014

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: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-perf-debuginfo, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-firmware, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo-common-i686, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-perf, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6.4

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

Patch Publication Date: 10/7/2014

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/28/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2014-0205

RHSA: 2014:1365