Topic

An updated initscripts package that fixes a privilege escalation issue and
several bugs is now available.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.

Description

The initscripts package contains the basic system scripts used to boot
your Red Hat system, change runlevels, and shut the system down cleanly.
Initscripts also contains the scripts that activate and deactivate most
network interfaces.

A bug was found in the way initscripts handled various environment
variables when the /sbin/service command is run. It is possible for a local
user with permissions to execute /sbin/service via sudo to execute
arbitrary commands as the 'root' user. The Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) assigned the name CVE-2005-3629 to
this issue.

The following issues have also been fixed in this update:

• extraneous characters were logged on bootup
• fsck was attempted on file systems marked with _netdev in rc.sysinit

before they were available

• the dynamically-linked /sbin/multipath was called instead of the correct

/sbin/multiplath.static

Additionally, this update includes support for partitioned multipath
devices and a technology preview of static IP over InifiniBand.

All users of initscripts should upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. To use Red Hat Network,
launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 108827 - RHEL4: Infiniband support
• BZ - 168321 - rc.sysinit call dynamicly linked multipath rather than multipath.static
• BZ - 171912 - Bogus messages in system log (/var/log/messages)
• BZ - 172804 - Automount of the emcpower device fails if fsck is enabled for the device in /etc/fstab.

CVEs

• CVE-2005-3629

References

(none)