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B.38.6. RHSA-2011:0498 — Important: kernel security, bug fix and enhancement update

Important

This update has already been released as the security errata RHSA-2011:0498
Updated kernel packages that resolve several security issues, fix various bugs and add an enhancement 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 after each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
Security fixes
* An integer overflow flaw in ib_uverbs_poll_cq() could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2010-4649, Important)
* An integer signedness flaw in drm_modeset_ctl() could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2011-1013, Important)
* The Radeon GPU drivers in the Linux kernel were missing sanity checks for the Anti Aliasing (AA) resolve register values which could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges on systems using a graphics card from the ATI Radeon R300, R400, or R500 family of cards. (CVE-2011-1016, Important)
* A flaw in dccp_rcv_state_process() could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service, even when the socket was already closed. (CVE-2011-1093, Important)
* A flaw in the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service if the sysctl net.sctp.addip_enable and auth_enable variables were turned on (they are off by default). (CVE-2011-1573, Important)
* A memory leak in the inotify_init() system call. In some cases, it could leak a group, which could allow a local, unprivileged user to eventually cause a denial of service. (CVE-2010-4250, Moderate)
* A missing validation of a null-terminated string data structure element in bnep_sock_ioctl() could allow a local user to cause an information leak or a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1079, Moderate)
* An information leak in bcm_connect() in the Controller Area Network (CAN) Broadcast Manager implementation could allow a local, unprivileged user to leak kernel mode addresses in /proc/net/can-bcm. (CVE-2010-4565, Low)
* A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) implementation. When SELinux was disabled, adding an IMA rule which was supposed to be processed by SELinux would cause ima_match_rules() to always succeed, ignoring any remaining rules. (CVE-2011-0006, Low)
* A missing initialization flaw in the XFS file system implementation could lead to an information leak. (CVE-2011-0711, Low)
* Buffer overflow flaws in snd_usb_caiaq_audio_init() and snd_usb_caiaq_midi_init() could allow a local, unprivileged user with access to a Native Instruments USB audio device to cause a denial of service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2011-0712, Low)
* The start_code and end_code values in /proc/<PID>/stat were not protected. In certain scenarios, this flaw could be used to defeat Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). (CVE-2011-0726, Low)
* A flaw in dev_load() could allow a local user who has the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to load arbitrary modules from /lib/modules/, instead of only netdev modules. (CVE-2011-1019, Low)
* A flaw in ib_uverbs_poll_cq() could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause an information leak. (CVE-2011-1044, Low)
* A missing validation of a null-terminated string data structure element in do_replace() could allow a local user who has the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to cause an information leak. (CVE-2011-1080, Low)
Red Hat would like to thank Vegard Nossum for reporting CVE-2010-4250; Vasiliy Kulikov for reporting CVE-2011-1079, CVE-2011-1019, and CVE-2011-1080; Dan Rosenberg for reporting CVE-2010-4565 and CVE-2011-0711; Rafael Dominguez Vega for reporting CVE-2011-0712; and Kees Cook for reporting CVE-2011-0726.
Bug fixes
BZ#659572
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel where, if used in conjunction with another flaw that can result in a kernel Oops, could possibly lead to privilege escalation. It does not affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as the sysctl panic_on_oops variable is turned on by default. However, as a preventive measure if the variable is turned off by an administrator, this update addresses the issue. Red Hat would like to thank Nelson Elhage for reporting this vulnerability.
BZ#694073
Under some circumstances, faulty logic in the system BIOS could report that ASPM (Active State Power Management) was not supported on the system, but leave ASPM enabled on a device. This could lead to AER (Advanced Error Reporting) errors that the kernel was unable to handle. With this update, the kernel proactively disables ASPM on devices when the BIOS reports that ASPM is not supported, safely eliminating the aforementioned issues.
BZ#696487
Prior to this update, adding a bond over a bridge inside a virtual guest caused the kernel to crash due to a NULL dereference. This update improves the tests for the presence of VLANs configured above bonding (additionally, this update fixes a regression introduced by the patch for BZ#633571) . The new logic determines whether a registration has occurred, instead of testing that the internal vlan_list of a bond is empty. Previously, the system panicked and crashed when vlan_list was not empty, but the vlgrp pointer was still NULL.
BZ#698109
During light or no network traffic, the active-backup interface bond using ARP monitoring with validation could go down and return due to an overflow or underflow of system timer interrupt ticks (jiffies). With this update, the jiffies calculation issues have been fixed and a bond interface works as expected.
BZ#691777
In certain network setups (specifically, using VLAN on certain NICs where packets are sent through the VLAN GRO rx path), sending packets from an active ethernet port to another inactive ethernet port could affect the network's bridge and cause the bridge to acquire a wrong bridge port. This resulted in all packets not being passed along in the network. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to address this issue, and network traffic works as expected.
BZ#698114, BZ#696889
Deleting a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) device attached to a device handler caused applications running in user space, which were performing I/O operations on that device, to become unresponsive. This was due to the fact that the SCSI device handler's activation did not propagate the SCSI device deletion via an error code and a callback to the Device-Mapper Multipath. With this update, deletion of an SCSI device attached to a device handler is properly handled and no longer causes certain applications to become unresponsive.
BZ#683440
Systems Management Applications using the libsmbios package could become unresponsive on Dell PowerEdge servers (specifically, Dell PowerEdge 2970 and Dell PowerEdge SC1435). The dcdbas driver can perform an I/O write operation which causes an SMI (System Management Interrupt) to occur. However, the SMI handler processed the SMI well after the outb function was processed, which caused random failures resulting in the aforementioned hang. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to address this issue, and systems management applications using the libsmbios package no longer become unresponsive.
BZ#670850
Invoking an EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) call caused a restart or a failure to boot to occur on a system with more than 512GB of memory because the EFI page tables did not map the whole kernel space. EFI page tables used only one PGD (Page Global Directory) entry to map the kernel space; thus, virtual addresses higher than PAGE_OFFSET + 512GB could not be accessed. With this update, EFI page tables map the whole kernel space.
BZ#683820
Enabling the Header Splitting mode on all Intel 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet hardware could lead to unpredictable behavior. With this update, the Header Splitting mode is never enabled on the aforementioned hardware.
BZ#670114
The ixgbe driver has been upgraded to upstream version 3.0.12, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.
BZ#670110
If an Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller was configured in a way that caused peer-to-peer traffic to be sent to the Intel X58 I/O hub (IOH), a PCIe credit starvation problem occurred. As a result, the system would hang. With this update, the system continues to work and does not hang.
BZ#683817
The ALSA HDA audio driver has been updated to improve support for new chipsets and HDA audio codecs.
BZ#689341
A buffer overflow flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Cluster IP hashmark target implementation. A local, unprivileged user could trigger this flaw and cause a local denial of service by editing files in the /proc/net/ipt_CLUSTERIP/ directory. Note: On Red Hat Enterprise 6, only root can write to files in the /proc/net/ipt_CLUSTERIP/ directory by default. This update corrects this issue as a preventative measure in case an administrator has changed the permissions on these files. Red Hat would like to thank Vasiliy Kulikov for reporting this issue.
BZ#684275
Using the pam_tty_audit.so module (which enables or disables TTY auditing for specified users) in the /etc/pam.d/sudo file and in the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file when the audit package is not installed resulted in soft lock-ups on CPUs. As a result, the kernel became unresponsive. This was due to the kernel exiting immediately after TTY auditing was disabled, without emptying the buffer, which caused the kernel to spin in a loop, copying 0 bytes at each iteration and attempting to push each time without any effect. With this update, a locking mechanism is introduced to prevent the aforementioned behavior.
BZ#679306
Prior to this update, a collection of world-writable sysfs and procfs files allowed an unprivileged user to change various settings, change device hardware registers, and load certain firmware. With this update, permissions for these files have been changed.
BZ#694186
A previously introduced patch could cause kswapd (the kernel's memory reclaim daemon) to enter an infinite loop, consuming 100% of the CPU it is running on. This happened because kswapd incorrectly stayed awake for an unreclaimable zone. This update addresses this issue, and kswapd no longer consumes 100% of the CPU it is running on.
BZ#695322
If an error occurred during an I/O operation, the SCSI driver reset the megaraid_sas controller to restore it to normal state. However, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the waiting time to allow a full reset completion for the megaraid_sas controller was too short. The driver incorrectly recognized the controller as stalled, and, as a result, the system stalled as well. With this update, more time is given to the controller to properly restart, thus, the controller operates as expected after being reset.
Enhancement
BZ#683810
This update provides VLAN null tagging support (VLAN ID 0 can be used in tags).
Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add this enhancement. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.