Synopsis

Moderate: kernel security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Moderate

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs
are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

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

Description

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

This update fixes the following security issues:

• multiple, missing initialization flaws were found in the Linux kernel.
  Padding data in several core network structures was not initialized
  properly before being sent to user-space. These flaws could lead to
  information leaks. (CVE-2005-4881, CVE-2009-3228, Moderate)
  

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• a packet duplication issue was fixed via the RHSA-2008:0665 update;
  however, the fix introduced a problem for systems using network bonding:
  Backup slaves were unable to receive ARP packets. When using network
  bonding in the "active-backup" mode and with the "arp_validate=3" option,
  the bonding driver considered such backup slaves as being down (since they
  were not receiving ARP packets), preventing successful failover to these
  devices. (BZ#519384)
  
• due to insufficient memory barriers in the network code, a process
  sleeping in select() may have missed notifications about new data. In rare
  cases, this bug may have caused a process to sleep forever. (BZ#519386)
  
• the driver version number in the ata_piix driver was not changed between
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8, even though
  changes had been made between these releases. This could have prevented the
  driver from loading on systems that check driver versions, as this driver
  appeared older than it was. (BZ#519389)
  
• a bug in nlm_lookup_host() could have led to un-reclaimed locks on file
  systems, resulting in the umount command failing. This bug could have also
  prevented NFS services from being relocated correctly in clustered
  environments. (BZ#519656)
  
• the data buffer ethtool_get_strings() allocated, for the igb driver, was
  smaller than the amount of data that was copied in igb_get_strings(),
  because of a miscalculation in IGB_QUEUE_STATS_LEN, resulting in memory
  corruption. This bug could have led to a kernel panic. (BZ#522738)
  
• in some situations, write operations to a TTY device were blocked even
  when the O_NONBLOCK flag was used. A reported case of this issue occurred
  when a single TTY device was opened by two users (one using blocking mode,
  and the other using non-blocking mode). (BZ#523930)
  
• a deadlock was found in the cciss driver. In rare cases, this caused an
  NMI lockup during boot. Messages such as "cciss: controller cciss[x]
  failed, stopping." and "cciss[x]: controller not responding." may have
  been displayed on the console. (BZ#525725)
  
• on 64-bit PowerPC systems, a rollover bug in the ibmveth driver could
  have caused a kernel panic. In a reported case, this panic occurred on a
  system with a large uptime and under heavy network load. (BZ#527225)
  

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported
patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this
update to take effect.

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/docs/DOC-11259

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 - Extended Update Support 4.8 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 4.8 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 4.8 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 IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 4.8 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 4.8 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 4.8 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 519384 - [RHEL 4] Arp Monitor - Failed to detect layer 2 switch failure [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 519386 - [RHEL4.5] Even if a process have received data but schedule() in select() cannot return [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 519389 - RHEL4.8-Beta : Update the version number of ata_piix driver [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 519656 - Bug in lockd prevents a locks being freed. [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 520990 - CVE-2009-3228 kernel: tc: uninitialised kernel memory leak
• BZ - 521601 - CVE-2005-4881 kernel: netlink: fix numerous padding memleaks
• BZ - 522738 - [RHEL4.8] igb driver doesn't allocate enough buffer for ethtool_get_strings() [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 523930 - [4.8]Write operation with O_NONBLOCK flag to TTY terminal is blocked [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 525725 - cciss: spinlock deadlock causes NMI on HP systems [rhel-4.8.z]
• BZ - 527225 - BUG in ibmveth_replenish_buffer_pool at drivers/net/ibmveth.c:219 [rhel-4.8.z]

CVEs

• CVE-2009-3228
• CVE-2005-4881
• CVE-2009-3612

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4

SRPM
x86_64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
ia64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
i386
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 4.8

SRPM
x86_64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
ia64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
i386
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4

SRPM
x86_64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
ia64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
i386
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4

SRPM
x86_64
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
i386
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4

SRPM
s390x
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
s390
kernel-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.s390.rpm	SHA-256: 283184eb52edb29332a0760ccd97b9df0fcc1c9223b13e3f1e5721acfd5058f4
kernel-devel-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.s390.rpm	SHA-256: 60f394af8de1dfc1b1e5b5c8a0e27c266df6bc7cf00b9a833f9783094962517b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 4.8

SRPM
s390x
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b
s390
kernel-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.s390.rpm	SHA-256: 283184eb52edb29332a0760ccd97b9df0fcc1c9223b13e3f1e5721acfd5058f4
kernel-devel-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.s390.rpm	SHA-256: 60f394af8de1dfc1b1e5b5c8a0e27c266df6bc7cf00b9a833f9783094962517b
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4

SRPM
ppc
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 4.8

SRPM
ppc
kernel-doc-2.6.9-89.0.15.EL.noarch.rpm	SHA-256: ea420c0a31e8cf8274aaf29d36b21fdb659d24620cb83eb4f38da247478ae45b