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RHEL 6 / 7 : pam (RHSA-2015:1640)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 85530

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Synopsis

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

Description

An updated pam package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Moderate 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.

Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) provide a system whereby administrators can set up authentication policies without having to recompile programs to handle authentication.

It was discovered that the _unix_run_helper_binary() function of PAM's unix_pam module could write to a blocking pipe, possibly causing the function to become unresponsive. An attacker able to supply large passwords to the unix_pam module could use this flaw to enumerate valid user accounts, or cause a denial of service on the system.
(CVE-2015-3238)

Red Hat would like to thank Sebastien Macke of Trustwave SpiderLabs for reporting this issue.

All pam users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which contains a backported patch to correct this issue.

Solution

Update the affected pam, pam-debuginfo and / or pam-devel packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015:1640

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2015-3238

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 85530

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2015-1640.nasl

Version: 2.16

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 8/19/2015

Updated: 10/24/2019

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.3

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.8

Temporal Score: 4.3

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

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Temporal Score: 5.7

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pam, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pam-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pam-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6.7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.1, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.2, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.3, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.4, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.5, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.6, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.7

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: 8/18/2015

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/24/2015

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2015-3238

RHSA: 2015:1640