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5.249. postgresql and postgresql84

Updated postgresql84 and postgresql packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 respectively.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system (DBMS).

Security Fixes

CVE-2012-2143
A flaw was found in the way the crypt() password hashing function from the optional PostgreSQL pgcrypto contrib module performed password transformation when used with the DES algorithm. If the password string to be hashed contained the 0x80 byte value, the remainder of the string was ignored when calculating the hash, significantly reducing the password strength. This made brute-force guessing more efficient as the whole password was not required to gain access to protected resources.
CVE-2012-2655
Note: With this update, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash; therefore, any previously stored password values that are affected by this issue will no longer match. In such cases, it will be necessary for those stored password hashes to be updated.
A denial of service flaw was found in the way the PostgreSQL server performed a user privileges check when applying SECURITY DEFINER or SET attributes to a procedural language's (such as PL/Perl or PL/Python) call handler function. A non-superuser database owner could use this flaw to cause the PostgreSQL server to crash due to infinite recursion.
Upstream acknowledges Rubin Xu and Joseph Bonneau as the original reporters of the CVE-2012-2143 issue.
These updated packages upgrade PostgreSQL to version 8.4.12, which fixes these issues as well as several non-security issues. Refer to the PostgreSQL Release Notes for a full list of changes:
All PostgreSQL users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct these issues. If the postgresql service is running, it will be automatically restarted after installing this update.
Updated postgresql84 and postgresql packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 respectively.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system (DBMS).

Security Fixes

CVE-2012-3488
It was found that the optional PostgreSQL xml2 contrib module allowed local files and remote URLs to be read and written to with the privileges of the database server when parsing Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT). An unprivileged database user could use this flaw to read and write to local files (such as the database's configuration files) and remote URLs they would otherwise not have access to by issuing a specially-crafted SQL query.
CVE-2012-3489
It was found that the "xml" data type allowed local files and remote URLs to be read with the privileges of the database server to resolve DTD and entity references in the provided XML. An unprivileged database user could use this flaw to read local files they would otherwise not have access to by issuing a specially-crafted SQL query. Note that the full contents of the files were not returned, but portions could be displayed to the user via error messages.
Red Hat would like to thank the PostgreSQL project for reporting these issues. Upstream acknowledges Peter Eisentraut as the original reporter of CVE-2012-3488, and Noah Misch as the original reporter of CVE-2012-3489.
These updated packages upgrade PostgreSQL to version 8.4.13. Refer to the PostgreSQL Release Notes for a list of changes:
All PostgreSQL users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct these issues. If the postgresql service is running, it will be automatically restarted after installing this update.