Synopsis

Important: kernel security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix two security issues and multiple bugs are
now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Extended Update Support.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having
important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base
scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each
vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

Description

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

This update fixes the following security issues:

• when an application has a stack overflow, the stack could silently
  overwrite another memory mapped area instead of a segmentation fault
  occurring, which could cause an application to execute arbitrary code,
  possibly leading to privilege escalation. It is known that the X Window
  System server can be used to trigger this flaw. (CVE-2010-2240, Important)
  
• a miscalculation of the size of the free space of the initial directory
  entry in a directory leaf block was found in the Linux kernel Global File
  System 2 (GFS2) implementation. A local, unprivileged user with write
  access to a GFS2-mounted file system could perform a rename operation on
  that file system to trigger a NULL pointer dereference, possibly resulting
  in a denial of service or privilege escalation. (CVE-2010-2798, Important)
  

Red Hat would like to thank the X.Org security team for reporting
CVE-2010-2240, with upstream acknowledging Rafal Wojtczuk as the original
reporter; and Grant Diffey of CenITex for reporting CVE-2010-2798.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 General Availability (GA) release
  introduced a regression in iSCSI failover time. While there was heavy I/O
  on the iSCSI layer, attempting to log out of an iSCSI connection at the
  same time a network problem was occurring, such as a switch dying or a
  cable being pulled out, resulted in iSCSI failover taking several minutes.
  With this update, failover occurs as expected. (BZ#583898)
  
• a bug was found in the way the megaraid_sas driver (for SAS based RAID
  controllers) handled physical disks and management IOCTLs. All physical
  disks were exported to the disk layer, allowing an oops in
  megasas_complete_cmd_dpc() when completing the IOCTL command if a timeout
  occurred. One possible trigger for this bug was running "mkfs". This update
  resolves this issue by updating the megaraid_sas driver to version 4.31.
  (BZ#619362)
  
• this update upgrades the bnx2x driver to version 1.52.1-6, and the bnx2x
  firmware to version 1.52.1-6, incorporating multiple bug fixes and
  enhancements. These fixes include: A race condition on systems using the
  bnx2x driver due to multiqueue being used to transmit data, but only a
  single queue transmit ON/OFF scheme being used (only a single queue is
  used with this update); a bug that could have led to a kernel panic when
  using iSCSI offload; and a bug that caused a firmware crash, causing
  network devices using the bnx2x driver to lose network connectivity. When
  this firmware crash occurred, errors such as "timeout polling for state"
  and "Stop leading failed!" were logged. A system reboot was required to
  restore network connectivity. (BZ#620663, BZ#620668, BZ#620669, BZ#620665)
  

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 all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the 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

To install kernel packages manually, use "rpm -ivh [package]". Do not
use "rpm -Uvh" as that will remove the running kernel binaries from
your system. You may use "rpm -e" to remove old kernels after
determining that the new kernel functions properly on your system.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 5.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 5.3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 5.3 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 for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 5.3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 5.3 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 583898 - REGRESSION: Fix iscsi failover time [rhel-5.3.z]
• BZ - 606611 - CVE-2010-2240 kernel: mm: keep a guard page below a grow-down stack segment
• BZ - 620300 - CVE-2010-2798 kernel: gfs2: rename causes kernel panic
• BZ - 620663 - [Broadcom 5.4 FEAT] Update bnx2x to 1.48.105 [rhel-5.3.z]
• BZ - 620665 - [Broadcom 5.5 FEAT] Update bnx2x to 1.52.1-5 [rhel-5.3.z]
• BZ - 620668 - [Broadcom 5.5 feat] Update bnx2x firmware [rhel-5.3.z]
• BZ - 620669 - [Broadcom 5.5 bug] bnx2x: net device is in XON state while the Tx ring is full [rhel-5.3.z]

CVEs

• CVE-2010-2240
• CVE-2010-2798

References

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

This erratum does not contain any packages.