Synopsis

Important: kernel security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix various security issues and several bugs
are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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

Description

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.

Security fixes:

• a missing capability check was found in the Linux kernel do_change_type

routine. This could allow a local unprivileged user to gain privileged
access or cause a denial of service. (CVE-2008-2931, Important)

• a flaw was found in the Linux kernel Direct-IO implementation. This could

allow a local unprivileged user to cause a denial of service.
(CVE-2007-6716, Important)

• Tobias Klein reported a missing check in the Linux kernel Open Sound

System (OSS) implementation. This deficiency could lead to a possible
information leak. (CVE-2008-3272, Moderate)

• a deficiency was found in the Linux kernel virtual filesystem (VFS)

implementation. This could allow a local unprivileged user to attempt file
creation within deleted directories, possibly causing a denial of service.
(CVE-2008-3275, Moderate)

• a flaw was found in the Linux kernel tmpfs implementation. This could

allow a local unprivileged user to read sensitive information from the
kernel. (CVE-2007-6417, Moderate)

Bug fixes:

• when copying a small IPoIB packet from the original skb it was received

in to a new, smaller skb, all fields in the new skb were not initialized.
This may have caused a kernel oops.

• previously, data may have been written beyond the end of an array,

causing memory corruption on certain systems, resulting in hypervisor
crashes during context switching.

• a kernel crash may have occurred on heavily-used Samba servers after 24

to 48 hours of use.

• under heavy memory pressure, pages may have been swapped out from under

the SGI Altix XPMEM driver, causing silent data corruption in the kernel.

• the ixgbe driver is untested, but support was advertised for the Intel

82598 network card. If this card was present when the ixgbe driver was
loaded, a NULL pointer dereference and a panic occurred.

• on certain systems, if multiple InfiniBand queue pairs simultaneously

fell into an error state, an overrun may have occurred, stopping traffic.

• with bridging, when forward delay was set to zero, setting an interface

to the forwarding state was delayed by one or possibly two timers,
depending on whether STP was enabled. This may have caused long delays in
moving an interface to the forwarding state. This issue caused packet loss
when migrating virtual machines, preventing them from being migrated
without interrupting applications.

• on certain multinode systems, IPMI device nodes were created in reverse

order of where they physically resided.

• process hangs may have occurred while accessing application data files

via asynchronous direct I/O system calls.

• on systems with heavy lock traffic, a possible deadlock may have caused

anything requiring locks over NFS to stop, or be very slow. Errors such as
"lockd: server [IP] not responding, timed out" were logged on client
systems.

• unexpected removals of USB devices may have caused a NULL pointer

dereference in kobject_get_path.

• on Itanium-based systems, repeatedly creating and destroying Windows

guests may have caused Dom0 to crash, due to the "XENMEM_add_to_physmap"
hypercall, used by para-virtualized drivers on HVM, being SMP-unsafe.

• when using an MD software RAID, crashes may have occurred when devices

were removed or changed while being iterated through. Correct locking is
now used.

• break requests had no effect when using "Serial Over Lan" with the Intel

82571 network card. This issue may have caused log in problems.

• on Itanium-based systems, module_free() referred the first parameter

before checking it was valid. This may have caused a kernel panic when
exiting SystemTap.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 users are advised to upgrade to these updated
packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.

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
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

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 5.2 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.2 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.2 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• 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 5.2 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 5.2 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 426081 - CVE-2007-6417 tmpfs: restore missing clear_highpage (kernels from 2.6.11 up)
• BZ - 447913 - LTC43854-trap 700 Program check on uli05, pc: c000000000323910: .skb_under_panic+0x50/0x68 [rhel-5.2.z]
• BZ - 454388 - CVE-2008-2931 kernel: missing check before setting mount propagation
• BZ - 455768 - Guest OS install causes host machine to crash
• BZ - 456235 - [RHEL5] Kernel panic triggered by smbd
• BZ - 456946 - Silent memory corruption with xpmem
• BZ - 457484 - ixgbe panics system when installing RHEL 5.2 with 82598AT (copper 10 gig) adapter
• BZ - 457858 - CVE-2008-3275 Linux kernel local filesystem DoS
• BZ - 457995 - CVE-2008-3272 kernel snd_seq_oss_synth_make_info leak
• BZ - 458779 - LTC44570-Event Queue overflow on eHCA adapters
• BZ - 458783 - lost packets when live migrating
• BZ - 459071 - LTC41679-IPMI device nodes created in reverse order on multinode systems
• BZ - 459082 - process hangs in async direct IO / possible race between dio_bio_end_aio() and dio_await_one() ?
• BZ - 459083 - deadlock when lockd tries to take f_sema that it already has
• BZ - 459776 - [Stratus 5.2.z bug] kernel NULL pointer dereference in kobject_get_path
• BZ - 459780 - [IA64] Fix SMP-unsafe with XENMEM_add_to_physmap on HVM
• BZ - 460128 - [NEC/Stratus 5.2.z bug] various crashes in md - rdev removed in the middle of ITERATE_RDEV
• BZ - 460509 - SysRq handling issue in serial driver
• BZ - 460639 - kprobes remove causing kernel panic on ia64 with 2.6.18-92.1.10.el5 kernel
• BZ - 461082 - CVE-2007-6716 kernel: dio: zero struct dio with kzalloc instead of manually

CVEs

• CVE-2008-3275
• CVE-2007-6716
• CVE-2007-6417
• CVE-2008-2931
• CVE-2008-3272

References