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Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2012:1235 - Security Advisory
Issued:
2012-09-05
Updated:
2012-09-05

RHSA-2012:1235 - Security Advisory

  • Overview
  • Updated Packages

Synopsis

Important: kvm security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Red Hat Insights patch analysis

Identify and remediate systems affected by this advisory.

View affected systems

Topic

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

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

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for
Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. KVM is a Linux kernel module built
for the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel.

A flaw was found in the way QEMU handled VT100 terminal escape sequences
when emulating certain character devices. A guest user with privileges to
write to a character device that is emulated on the host using a virtual
console back-end could use this flaw to crash the qemu-kvm process on the
host or, possibly, escalate their privileges on the host. (CVE-2012-3515)

This flaw did not affect the default use of KVM. Affected configurations
were:

  • When guests were started from the command line ("/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm"),

and without specifying a serial or parallel device that specifically does
not use a virtual console (vc) back-end. (Note that Red Hat does not
support invoking "qemu-kvm" from the command line on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5.)

  • Guests that were managed via libvirt, such as when using Virtual Machine

Manager (virt-manager), but that have a serial or parallel device that uses
a virtual console back-end. By default, guests managed via libvirt will not
use a virtual console back-end for such devices.

Red Hat would like to thank the Xen project for reporting this issue.

All KVM users should upgrade to these updated packages, which correct this
issue. Note: The procedure in the Solution section must be performed before
this update will 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/knowledge/articles/11258

The following procedure must be performed before this update will take
effect:

1) Stop all KVM guest virtual machines.

2) Either reboot the hypervisor machine or, as the root user, remove (using
"modprobe -r [module]") and reload (using "modprobe [module]") all of the
following modules which are currently running (determined using "lsmod"):
kvm, ksm, kvm-intel or kvm-amd.

3) Restart the KVM guest virtual machines.

Affected Products

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64

Fixes

  • BZ - 851252 - CVE-2012-3515 qemu: VT100 emulation vulnerability

CVEs

  • CVE-2012-3515

References

  • https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important
Note: More recent versions of these packages may be available. Click a package name for more details.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5

SRPM
kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.src.rpm SHA-256: 3c4ab02763d01cf0e0517e0bdc05ec4c19f061c143c4e048560be4d42221d8f8
x86_64
kmod-kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 70de6afc34d5f6f0a4e8dd0115b5245061ee0b1bb35b92f209f83dcbfcc0744e
kmod-kvm-debug-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 096b37e4252c02a931c213cd53a17097bf299cd6308af8ac56460a90d3153928
kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 2caaeb74effae1230fffbdd7a87834dde571edf44764ce871ab12d523e92821e
kvm-debuginfo-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: ae8928b078c29b70d9f2294e97584e9a20a6c7f696dbe096b5703488bba66f02
kvm-qemu-img-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 0ebabb804a17e1dd9f56ce8b557d93b01ef9cc8fb761d849f211f81d618f31c6
kvm-tools-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: fe0bb79e75cf65ed623cea0c52288b59f0e347c94446d4ab6a94f35c42a0c4e9

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5

SRPM
kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.src.rpm SHA-256: 3c4ab02763d01cf0e0517e0bdc05ec4c19f061c143c4e048560be4d42221d8f8
x86_64
kmod-kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 70de6afc34d5f6f0a4e8dd0115b5245061ee0b1bb35b92f209f83dcbfcc0744e
kmod-kvm-debug-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 096b37e4252c02a931c213cd53a17097bf299cd6308af8ac56460a90d3153928
kvm-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 2caaeb74effae1230fffbdd7a87834dde571edf44764ce871ab12d523e92821e
kvm-debuginfo-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: ae8928b078c29b70d9f2294e97584e9a20a6c7f696dbe096b5703488bba66f02
kvm-qemu-img-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: 0ebabb804a17e1dd9f56ce8b557d93b01ef9cc8fb761d849f211f81d618f31c6
kvm-tools-83-249.el5_8.5.x86_64.rpm SHA-256: fe0bb79e75cf65ed623cea0c52288b59f0e347c94446d4ab6a94f35c42a0c4e9

The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.

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