RHEL 6 : glibc (RHSA-2015:0863)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 82984

Synopsis

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

Description

Updated glibc packages that fix two security issues and one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Red Hat Product Security 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.

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.

A buffer overflow flaw was found in the way glibc's gethostbyname_r() and other related functions computed the size of a buffer when passed a misaligned buffer as input. An attacker able to make an application call any of these functions with a misaligned buffer could use this flaw to crash the application or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application.
(CVE-2015-1781)

It was discovered that, under certain circumstances, glibc's getaddrinfo() function would send DNS queries to random file descriptors. An attacker could potentially use this flaw to send DNS queries to unintended recipients, resulting in information disclosure or data loss due to the application encountering corrupted data.
(CVE-2013-7423)

The CVE-2015-1781 issue was discovered by Arjun Shankar of Red Hat.

This update also fixes the following bug :

* Previously, the nscd daemon did not properly reload modified data when the user edited monitored nscd configuration files. As a consequence, nscd returned stale data to system processes. This update adds a system of inotify-based monitoring and stat-based backup monitoring for nscd configuration files. As a result, nscd now detects changes to its configuration files and reloads the data properly, which prevents it from returning stale data. (BZ#1194149)

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

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015:0863

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2015-1781

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2013-7423

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 82984

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2015-0863.nasl

Version: 1.13

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 4/22/2015

Updated: 2/5/2021

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: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.8

Temporal Score: 5.9

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-headers, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-debuginfo-common, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:glibc-debuginfo, 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-utils, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6.6, 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: 4/21/2015

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/24/2015

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2013-7423, CVE-2015-1781

BID: 72844, 74255

RHSA: 2015:0863