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4.9. bind

Updated bind packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team 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 associated with the description below.
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is an implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) protocols. BIND includes a DNS server (named); a resolver library (routines for applications to use when interfacing with DNS); and tools for verifying that the DNS server is operating correctly.

Security Fix

CVE-2011-4313
A flaw was discovered in the way BIND handled certain DNS queries, which caused it to cache an invalid record. A remote attacker could use this flaw to send repeated queries for this invalid record, causing the resolvers to exit unexpectedly due to a failed assertion.
Users of bind are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve this issue. After installing the update, the BIND daemon (named) will be restarted automatically.
Updated bind packages that fix several bugs and add an enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is an implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) protocols. BIND includes a DNS server (named), a resolver library (routines for applications to use when interfacing with DNS), and tools for verifying that the DNS server is operating correctly.

Bug Fixes

BZ#663112
Previously, the "named" name service daemon failed to set the max open files limit to "unlimited" by default. Consequently, the error message "max open files (1024) is smaller than max sockets (4096)" was logged. With this update the problem has been fixed, named now sets max open files limit to "unlimited" as documented, and the problem no longer occurs.
BZ#676242
Prior to this update, the code in libdns which sends DNS requests was not robust enough and suffered from a race condition. If a race condition occurred, the "named" name service daemon logged an error message in the format, "zone xxx.xxx.xxx.in-addr.arpa/IN: refresh: failure trying master xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx#53 (source xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx#0): operation canceled", even when zone refresh was successful. This update improves the code to prevent a race condition in libdns and the error no longer occurs in the scenario described.
BZ#692758
A non-writable working directory is a long time feature on all Red Hat systems. Previously, named wrote "the working directory is not writable" as an error to the system log. This update changes the code so that named now writes this information only into the debug log.
BZ#703451
When the "search" option was present in the "/etc/resolv.conf" file but there were no arguments entered for the option, the contents of the following line in the file was interpreted as the missing argument. Consequently, if the following line contained the only "nameserver" option in the file, the system would have no nameservers specified and therefore fail to resolve any hostnames. With this update the code has been improved, the resolv.conf file is parsed correctly, and the problem no longer occurs in the scenario described.
BZ#712791
The "/usr/sbin/bind-chroot-admin" script created symlinks with a double-slash (//) in the paths. This caused logrotate to fail to rotate "/var/log/named.log" correctly. With this update, the bind-chroot-admin utility is fixed and no longer creates symlinks with a double-slash and as a result "/var/log/named.log" is rotated as expected.
BZ#726120
When /etc/resolv.conf contained nameservers with disabled recursion, nslookup failed to resolve certain host names. With this update, nslookup has been patched and now works as expected in the scenario described.
BZ#733698
During a DNS zone transfer, named sometimes terminated unexpectedly with an assertion failure. With this update, a patch has been applied to make the code more robust, and named no longer crashes in the scenario described.
BZ#758873
The named daemon, configured as master server, sometimes failed to transfer an uncompressible zone. The following error message was logged:
transfer of './IN': sending zone data: ran out of space The code which handles zone transfers has been fixed and this error no longer occurs in the scenario described.

Enhancement

BZ#703442
The manpage of the "dig" utility did not document dig's exit status codes. With this update, the "dig" manual page now describes "/usr/bin/dig" exit codes.
Users are advised to upgrade to these updated bind packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.