RHSA-2011:0391 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated libvirt packages that fix one security issue are now available for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having
important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the
CVE link in the References section.

Description

The libvirt library is a C API for managing and interacting with the
virtualization capabilities of Linux and other operating systems. In
addition, libvirt provides tools for remotely managing virtualized systems.

It was found that several libvirt API calls did not honor the read-only
permission for connections. A local attacker able to establish a read-only
connection to libvirtd on a server could use this flaw to execute commands
that should be restricted to read-write connections, possibly leading to a
denial of service or privilege escalation. (CVE-2011-1146)

Note: Previously, using rpmbuild without the '--define "rhel 5"' option to
build the libvirt source RPM on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 failed with a
"Failed build dependencies" error for the device-mapper-devel package, as
this -devel sub-package is not available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
With this update, the -devel sub-package is no longer checked by default as
a dependency when building on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, allowing the
libvirt source RPM to build as expected.

All libvirt users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain a backported patch to resolve this issue. After installing the
updated packages, libvirtd must be restarted ("service libvirtd restart")
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
https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• 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 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.6 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 683650 - CVE-2011-1146 libvirt: several API calls do not honour read-only connection

CVEs

• CVE-2011-1146

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important