Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important 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 kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

This update fixes the following security issues :

* An integer underflow flaw, leading to a buffer overflow, was found in the Linux kernel's Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) implementation. This could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1770, Important)

* Missing sanity checks were found in setup_arg_pages() in the Linux kernel. When making the size of the argument and environment area on the stack very large, it could trigger a BUG_ON(), resulting in a local denial of service. (CVE-2010-3858, Moderate)

* A missing validation check was found in the bcm_release() and raw_release() functions in the Linux kernel's Controller Area Network (CAN) implementation. This could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1598, CVE-2011-1748, Moderate)

* The fix for Red Hat Bugzilla bug 656461, as provided in RHSA-2011:0542, introduced a regression in the cifs_close() function in the Linux kernel's Common Internet File System (CIFS) implementation. A local, unprivileged user with write access to a CIFS file system could use this flaw to cause a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-1771, Moderate)

Red Hat would like to thank Dan Rosenberg for reporting CVE-2011-1770;
Brad Spengler for reporting CVE-2010-3858; and Oliver Hartkopp for reporting CVE-2011-1748.

This update also fixes various bugs. Documentation for these bug fixes will be available shortly from the Technical Notes document linked to in the References section.

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues, and fix the bugs noted in the Technical Notes. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

The remote Oracle Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the ELSA-2011-0836 advisory.

    - [net] dccp: handle invalid feature options length (Jiri Pirko) [703012 703013] {CVE-2011-1770}
    - [fs] cifs: check for private_data before trying to put it (Jeff Layton) [703017 702642] {CVE-2011-1771}
    - [net] can: add missing socket check in can/raw and can/bcm release (Jiri Pirko) [698482 698483]     {CVE-2011-1748 CVE-2011-1598}
    - [fs] setup_arg_pages: diagnose excessive argument size (Oleg Nesterov) [645228 645229] {CVE-2010-3858}

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Oracle 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.

Goldwyn Rodrigues discovered that the OCFS2 filesystem did not correctly clear memory when writing certain file holes. A local attacker could exploit this to read uninitialized data from the disk, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-0463)

Timo Warns discovered that the LDM disk partition handling code did not correctly handle certain values. By inserting a specially crafted disk device, a local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1017)

It was discovered that the /proc filesystem did not correctly handle permission changes when programs executed. A local attacker could hold open files to examine details about programs running with higher privileges, potentially increasing the chances of exploiting additional vulnerabilities. (CVE-2011-1020)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly clear memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1078)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly check that device name strings were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1079)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that bridge network filtering did not check that name fields were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1080)

Peter Huewe discovered that the TPM device did not correctly initialize memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel heap memory contents, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1160)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the netfilter code did not check certain strings copied from userspace. A local attacker with netfilter access could exploit this to read kernel memory or crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1170, CVE-2011-1171, CVE-2011-1172, CVE-2011-2534)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Acorn Universal Networking driver did not correctly initialize memory. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1173)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the IRDA subsystem did not correctly check certain field sizes. If a system was using IRDA, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1180)

Julien Tinnes discovered that the kernel did not correctly validate the signal structure from tkill(). A local attacker could exploit this to send signals to arbitrary threads, possibly bypassing expected restrictions. (CVE-2011-1182)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the X.25 Rose network stack did not correctly handle certain fields. If a system was running with Rose enabled, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1493)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that MPT devices did not correctly validate certain values in ioctl calls. If these drivers were loaded, a local attacker could exploit this to read arbitrary kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495)

Timo Warns discovered that the GUID partition parsing routines did not correctly validate certain structures. A local attacker with physical access could plug in a specially crafted block device to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1577)

Phil Oester discovered that the network bonding system did not correctly handle large queues. On some systems, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1581)

Tavis Ormandy discovered that the pidmap function did not correctly handle large requests. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1593)

Oliver Hartkopp and Dave Jones discovered that the CAN network driver did not correctly validate certain socket structures. If this driver was loaded, a local attacker could crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1598, CVE-2011-1748)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check certain ioctl values. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1745, CVE-2011-2022)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check the size of certain memory allocations. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to run the system out of memory, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1746)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the DCCP stack did not correctly handle certain packet structures. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1770)

Ben Greear discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle direct I/O.
A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1771)

Vasiliy Kulikov and Dan Rosenberg discovered that ecryptfs did not correctly check the origin of mount points. A local attacker could exploit this to trick the system into unmounting arbitrary mount points, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1833)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that taskstats listeners were not correctly handled. A local attacker could expoit this to exhaust memory and CPU resources, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2484)

It was discovered that Bluetooth l2cap and rfcomm did not correctly initialize structures. A local attacker could exploit this to read portions of the kernel stack, leading to a loss of privacy.
(CVE-2011-2492)

Sami Liedes discovered that ext4 did not correctly handle missing root inodes. A local attacker could trigger the mount of a specially crafted filesystem to cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2493)

It was discovered that GFS2 did not correctly check block sizes. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2689)

Fernando Gont discovered that the IPv6 stack used predictable fragment identification numbers. A remote attacker could exploit this to exhaust network resources, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2699)

The performance counter subsystem did not correctly handle certain counters. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2918)

It was discovered that the /proc filesystem did not correctly handle permission changes when programs executed. A local attacker could hold open files to examine details about programs running with higher privileges, potentially increasing the chances of exploiting additional vulnerabilities. (CVE-2011-1020)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly clear memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1078)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly check that device name strings were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1079)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that bridge network filtering did not check that name fields were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1080)

Johan Hovold discovered that the DCCP network stack did not correctly handle certain packet combinations. A remote attacker could send specially crafted network traffic that would crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1093)

Peter Huewe discovered that the TPM device did not correctly initialize memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel heap memory contents, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1160)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the IRDA subsystem did not correctly check certain field sizes. If a system was using IRDA, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1180)

Ryan Sweat discovered that the GRO code did not correctly validate memory. In some configurations on systems using VLANs, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1478)

It was discovered that the security fix for CVE-2010-4250 introduced a regression. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1479)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the X.25 Rose network stack did not correctly handle certain fields. If a system was running with Rose enabled, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1493)

It was discovered that the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation incorrectly calculated lengths. If the net.sctp.addip_enable variable was turned on, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system. (CVE-2011-1573)

Ryan Sweat discovered that the kernel incorrectly handled certain VLAN packets. On some systems, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-1576)

Timo Warns discovered that the GUID partition parsing routines did not correctly validate certain structures. A local attacker with physical access could plug in a specially crafted block device to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1577)

Phil Oester discovered that the network bonding system did not correctly handle large queues. On some systems, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1581)

It was discovered that CIFS incorrectly handled authentication. When a user had a CIFS share mounted that required authentication, a local user could mount the same share without knowing the correct password.
(CVE-2011-1585)

It was discovered that the GRE protocol incorrectly handled netns initialization. A remote attacker could send a packet while the ip_gre module was loading, and crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1767)

It was discovered that the IP/IP protocol incorrectly handled netns initialization. A remote attacker could send a packet while the ipip module was loading, and crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1768)

Ben Greear discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle direct I/O. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1771)

Timo Warns discovered that the EFI GUID partition table was not correctly parsed. A physically local attacker that could insert mountable devices could exploit this to crash the system or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1776)

Vasiliy Kulikov and Dan Rosenberg discovered that ecryptfs did not correctly check the origin of mount points. A local attacker could exploit this to trick the system into unmounting arbitrary mount points, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1833)

Ben Hutchings reported a flaw in the kernel's handling of corrupt LDM partitions. A local user could exploit this to cause a denial of service or escalate privileges. (CVE-2011-2182)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the IPv4 diagnostic routines did not correctly validate certain requests. A local attacker could exploit this to consume CPU resources, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2213)

It was discovered that an mmap() call with the MAP_PRIVATE flag on '/dev/zero' was incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2479)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that taskstats listeners were not correctly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to exhaust memory and CPU resources, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2484)

It was discovered that Bluetooth l2cap and rfcomm did not correctly initialize structures. A local attacker could exploit this to read portions of the kernel stack, leading to a loss of privacy.
(CVE-2011-2492)

Sami Liedes discovered that ext4 did not correctly handle missing root inodes. A local attacker could trigger the mount of a specially crafted filesystem to cause the system to crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2493)

Robert Swiecki discovered that mapping extensions were incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2496)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the Bluetooth stack incorrectly handled certain L2CAP requests. If a system was using Bluetooth, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-2497)

Ben Pfaff discovered that Classless Queuing Disciplines (qdiscs) were being incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2525)

It was discovered that GFS2 did not correctly check block sizes. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2689)

It was discovered that the EXT4 filesystem contained multiple off-by-one flaws. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2695)

Fernando Gont discovered that the IPv6 stack used predictable fragment identification numbers. A remote attacker could exploit this to exhaust network resources, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2699)

Mauro Carvalho Chehab discovered that the si4713 radio driver did not correctly check the length of memory copies. If this hardware was available, a local attacker could exploit this to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-2700)

Herbert Xu discovered that certain fields were incorrectly handled when Generic Receive Offload (CVE-2011-2723)

The performance counter subsystem did not correctly handle certain counters. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2918)

Time Warns discovered that long symlinks were incorrectly handled on Be filesystems. A local attacker could exploit this with a malformed Be filesystem and crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2928)

Qianfeng Zhang discovered that the bridge networking interface incorrectly handled certain network packets. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2942)

Dan Kaminsky discovered that the kernel incorrectly handled random sequence number generation. An attacker could use this flaw to possibly predict sequence numbers and inject packets. (CVE-2011-3188)

Darren Lavender discovered that the CIFS client incorrectly handled certain large values. A remote attacker with a malicious server could exploit this to crash the system or possibly execute arbitrary code as the root user. (CVE-2011-3191)

Yasuaki Ishimatsu discovered a flaw in the kernel's clock implementation. A local unprivileged attacker could exploit this causing a denial of service. (CVE-2011-3209)

Yogesh Sharma discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle UNCs that had no prefixpaths. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-3363)

A flaw was discovered in the Linux kernel's AppArmor security interface when invalid information was written to it. An unprivileged local user could use this to cause a denial of service on the system.
(CVE-2011-3619)

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's /proc/*/*map* interface. A local, unprivileged user could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-3637)

Scot Doyle discovered that the bridge networking interface incorrectly handled certain network packets. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-4087)

A bug was found in the way headroom check was performed in udp6_ufo_fragment() function. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system. (CVE-2011-4326)

Ben Hutchings discovered several flaws in the Linux Rose (X.25 PLP) layer. A local user or a remote user on an X.25 network could exploit these flaws to execute arbitrary code as root. (CVE-2011-4914).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Aristide Fattori and Roberto Paleari reported a flaw in the Linux kernel's handling of IPv4 icmp packets. A remote user could exploit this to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1927)

Goldwyn Rodrigues discovered that the OCFS2 filesystem did not correctly clear memory when writing certain file holes. A local attacker could exploit this to read uninitialized data from the disk, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-0463)

Timo Warns discovered that the LDM disk partition handling code did not correctly handle certain values. By inserting a specially crafted disk device, a local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1017)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly clear memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1078)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly check that device name strings were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1079)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that bridge network filtering did not check that name fields were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1080)

Johan Hovold discovered that the DCCP network stack did not correctly handle certain packet combinations. A remote attacker could send specially crafted network traffic that would crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1093)

Peter Huewe discovered that the TPM device did not correctly initialize memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel heap memory contents, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1160)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the netfilter code did not check certain strings copied from userspace. A local attacker with netfilter access could exploit this to read kernel memory or crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1170, CVE-2011-1171, CVE-2011-1172, CVE-2011-2534)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Acorn Universal Networking driver did not correctly initialize memory. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1173)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the IRDA subsystem did not correctly check certain field sizes. If a system was using IRDA, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1180)

Dan Rosenberg reported errors in the OSS (Open Sound System) MIDI interface. A local attacker on non-x86 systems might be able to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1476)

Dan Rosenberg reported errors in the kernel's OSS (Open Sound System) driver for Yamaha FM synthesizer chips. A local user can exploit this to cause memory corruption, causing a denial of service or privilege escalation. (CVE-2011-1477)

It was discovered that the security fix for CVE-2010-4250 introduced a regression. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1479)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that MPT devices did not correctly validate certain values in ioctl calls. If these drivers were loaded, a local attacker could exploit this to read arbitrary kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495)

Tavis Ormandy discovered that the pidmap function did not correctly handle large requests. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1593)

Oliver Hartkopp and Dave Jones discovered that the CAN network driver did not correctly validate certain socket structures. If this driver was loaded, a local attacker could crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1598, CVE-2011-1748)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check certain ioctl values. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1745, CVE-2011-2022)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check the size of certain memory allocations. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to run the system out of memory, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1746)

Dan Rosenberg reported an error in the old ABI compatibility layer of ARM kernels. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1759)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the DCCP stack did not correctly handle certain packet structures. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1770)

Ben Greear discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle direct I/O. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1771)

Timo Warns discovered that the EFI GUID partition table was not correctly parsed. A physically local attacker that could insert mountable devices could exploit this to crash the system or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1776)

It was discovered that an mmap() call with the MAP_PRIVATE flag on '/dev/zero' was incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2479)

Robert Swiecki discovered that mapping extensions were incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2496)

The linux kernel did not properly account for PTE pages when deciding which task to kill in out of memory conditions. A local, unprivileged could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2498)

A flaw was found in the b43 driver in the Linux kernel. An attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service if the system has an active wireless interface using the b43 driver. (CVE-2011-3359)

Yogesh Sharma discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle UNCs that had no prefixpaths. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-3363)

Dan Rosenberg discovered flaws in the linux Rose (X.25 PLP) layer used by amateur radio. A local user or a remote user on an X.25 network could exploit these flaws to execute arbitrary code as root.
(CVE-2011-4913).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Published	Updated	Severity
54941	RHEL 6 : kernel (RHSA-2011:0836)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	6/2/2011	1/14/2021	high
68277	Oracle Linux 6 : kernel (ELSA-2011-0836)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	7/12/2013	10/22/2024	high
56257	USN-1212-1 : linux-ti-omap4 vulnerabilities	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	9/22/2011	10/16/2019	high
56768	Ubuntu 10.04 LTS : linux-lts-backport-natty vulnerabilities (USN-1256-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	11/10/2011	9/19/2019	critical
55591	Ubuntu 11.04 : linux vulnerabilities (USN-1167-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	7/14/2011	2/26/2020	medium

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