Synopsis

openssl security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

Updated OpenSSL packages are now available to correct several security issues.

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

Description

The OpenSSL toolkit provides support for secure communications between
machines. OpenSSL includes a certificate management tool and shared
libraries which provide various cryptographic algorithms and protocols.

Tavis Ormandy and Will Drewry of the Google Security Team discovered a
buffer overflow in the SSL_get_shared_ciphers() utility function. An
attacker could send a list of ciphers to an application that used this
function and overrun a buffer (CVE-2006-3738). Few applications make use
of this vulnerable function and generally it is used only when applications
are compiled for debugging.

Tavis Ormandy and Will Drewry of the Google Security Team discovered a
flaw in the SSLv2 client code. When a client application used OpenSSL to
create an SSLv2 connection to a malicious server, that server could cause
the client to crash. (CVE-2006-4343)

Dr S. N. Henson of the OpenSSL core team and Open Network Security recently
developed an ASN.1 test suite for NISCC (www.niscc.gov.uk) which uncovered
denial of service vulnerabilities:

• Certain public key types can take disproportionate amounts of time to
  process, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2006-2940)
  
• During parsing of certain invalid ASN.1 structures an error condition was
  mishandled. This can result in an infinite loop which consumed system
  memory (CVE-2006-2937). This issue does not affect the OpenSSL version
  distributed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1.
  

These vulnerabilities can affect applications which use OpenSSL to parse
ASN.1 data from untrusted sources, including SSL servers which enable
client authentication and S/MIME applications.

Users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain
backported patches to correct these issues.

Note: After installing this update, users are advised to either restart all
services that use OpenSSL or restart their system.

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 Server 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 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 Workstation 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 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 IBM z Systems 3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 3 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 3 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 206940 - CVE-2006-3738 OpenSSL issues (CVE-2006-4343)
• BZ - 207274 - CVE-2006-2940 OpenSSL Parasitic Public Keys
• BZ - 207276 - CVE-2006-2937 OpenSSL ASN1 DoS

CVEs

• CVE-2006-2940
• CVE-2006-3738
• CVE-2006-2937
• CVE-2006-4343

References

• http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20060928.txt
• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

This erratum does not contain any packages.