RHEL 6 : glibc (RHSA-2015:0016)

high Nessus Plugin ID 80408

Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2015:0016 advisory.

The glibc packages provide the standard C libraries (libc), POSIX thread libraries (libpthread), standard math libraries (libm), and the Name Server Caching Daemon (nscd) used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function correctly.

An out-of-bounds read flaw was found in the way glibc's iconv() function converted certain encoded data to UTF-8. An attacker able to make an application call the iconv() function with a specially crafted argument could use this flaw to crash that application. (CVE-2014-6040)

It was found that the wordexp() function would perform command substitution even when the WRDE_NOCMD flag was specified. An attacker able to provide specially crafted input to an application using the wordexp() function, and not sanitizing the input correctly, could potentially use this flaw to execute arbitrary commands with the credentials of the user running that application. (CVE-2014-7817)

The CVE-2014-7817 issue was discovered by Tim Waugh of the Red Hat Developer Experience Team.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* Previously, when an address lookup using the getaddrinfo() function for the AF_UNSPEC value was performed on a defective DNS server, the server in some cases responded with a valid response for the A record, but a referral response for the AAAA record, which resulted in a lookup failure. A prior update was implemented for getaddrinfo() to return the valid response, but it contained a typographical error, due to which the lookup could under some circumstances still fail. This error has been corrected and getaddrinfo() now returns a valid response in the described circumstances.
(BZ#1172023)

* An error in the dlopen() library function previously caused recursive calls to dlopen() to terminate unexpectedly or to abort with a library assertion. This error has been fixed and recursive calls to dlopen() no longer crash or abort. (BZ#1173469)

All glibc users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

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 glibc package based on the guidance in RHSA-2015:0016.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?0fe5ccfc

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015:0016

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

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1135841

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1157689

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 80408

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2015-0016.nasl

Version: 1.17

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 1/8/2015

Updated: 11/4/2024

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: 5.9

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Moderate

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.6

Temporal Score: 3.6

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2014-7817

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.7

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

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2014-6040

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-headers, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-utils, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-common, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-static, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nscd

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: 1/7/2015

Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/24/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2014-6040, CVE-2014-7817

BID: 69472, 71216

CWE: 119, 440

RHSA: 2015:0016