RHSA-2012:0058 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated glibc packages that fix two security issues and three bugs are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate
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 glibc packages contain the standard C libraries used by multiple
programs on the system. These packages contain the standard C and the
standard math libraries. Without these two libraries, a Linux system cannot
function properly.

An integer overflow flaw, leading to a heap-based buffer overflow, was
found in the way the glibc library read timezone files. If a
carefully-crafted timezone file was loaded by an application linked against
glibc, it could cause the application to crash or, potentially, execute
arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application.
(CVE-2009-5029)

A denial of service flaw was found in the remote procedure call (RPC)
implementation in glibc. A remote attacker able to open a large number of
connections to an RPC service that is using the RPC implementation from
glibc, could use this flaw to make that service use an excessive amount of
CPU time. (CVE-2011-4609)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• glibc had incorrect information for numeric separators and groupings for

specific French, Spanish, and German locales. Therefore, applications
utilizing glibc's locale support printed numbers with the wrong separators
and groupings when those locales were in use. With this update, the
separator and grouping information has been fixed. (BZ#754116)

• The RHBA-2011:1179 glibc update introduced a regression, causing glibc to

incorrectly parse groups with more than 126 members, resulting in
applications such as "id" failing to list all the groups a particular user
was a member of. With this update, group parsing has been fixed.
(BZ#766484)

• glibc incorrectly allocated too much memory due to a race condition

within its own malloc routines. This could cause a multi-threaded
application to allocate more memory than was expected. With this update,
the race condition has been fixed, and malloc's behavior is now consistent
with the documentation regarding the MALLOC_ARENA_TEST and MALLOC_ARENA_MAX
environment variables. (BZ#769594)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported
patches to resolve these issues.

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 for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 6.2 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 6.2 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 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 IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 6.2 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 6.2 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 Update Support from RHUI 6.2 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support from RHUI 6.2 i386
• Red Hat Storage 2.0 x86_64
• Red Hat Gluster Storage Server for On-premise 2.0 x86_64
• Red Hat Storage for Public Cloud (via RHUI) 2.0 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 6.2 x86_64
• 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 Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 761245 - CVE-2009-5029 glibc: __tzfile_read integer overflow to buffer overflow
• BZ - 767299 - CVE-2011-4609 glibc: svc_run() produces high cpu usage when accept() fails with EMFILE error

CVEs

• CVE-2009-5029
• CVE-2011-4609

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate
• https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-1179.html