RHBA-2009:1161 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated nspr and nss packages that fix several bugs and add an enhancement
are now available

Description

Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR) provides platform independence for non-GUI
operating system facilities. These facilities include threads, thread
synchronization, normal file and network I/O, interval timing, calendar
time, basic memory management (malloc and free), and shared library linking.

Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to support
the cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server
applications. Applications built with NSS can support SSLv2, SSLv3, TLS,
and other security standards.

These updated packages upgrade nss from the previous version, 3.12.2, to a
prerelease of version 3.12.4. The version of nspr has also been upgraded,
from 4.7.3 to 4.7.4. These version upgrades provide fixes for the following
bugs:

• SSL client authentication failed against an Apache server when it was

using the mod_nss module and configured for NSSOCSP.

On the client side, the user agent received an error message that
referenced "Error Code: -12271" and stated that establishing an encrypted
connection had failed because the certificate had been rejected by the
host.

On the server side, the nss_error_log under /var/log/httpd/ contained the
following message:
"[error] Re-negotiation handshake failed: Not accepted by client!?"

Also, /var/log/httpd/error_log contained this error message:
"SSL Library Error: -8071 The OCSP server experienced an internal error."

With these updated packages, the dependency problem which caused this
failure has been resolved so that SSL client authentication with an
Apache web server using mod_nss which is configured for NSSOCSP succeeds
as expected. Note that if the presented client certificate is expired,
then access is denied, the user agent is presented with an error message
about the invalid certificate, and the OCSP queries are seen in the OCSP
responder. Also, similar OCSP status verification happens for SSL server
certificates used in Apache upon instance start or restart. (BZ#499052)

• Attempting client authorization with a certificate authority when using

ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) on a machine with a hardware security
module (HSM) failed with an error message stating that the browser (the
test agent in this case) was unable to authenticate to the agent URL. This
has been fixed in these updated packages so that agents are once again able
to authenticate with certificate authorities when using the ECC algorithm
on machines with an HSM. (BZ#223279)

• In addition, these updated packages provide an enhancement to update

cryptography services required by the Openswan package. (BZ#502201)

All users of nspr and nss are advised to upgrade to these updated packages,
which resolve these issues and provide these enhancements.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-1125.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 5.3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 5.3 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 502201 - Unable to start/run JAVA applications using NSS-3.12.3
• BZ - 506085 - NSS potentially access random memory during SSL connections
• BZ - 511862 - AVC failure in CVE-2007-4465 due to mod_nss (bad selinux policy)
• BZ - 511868 - To Implement a function which returns the handle for symmetric keys in NSS

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)