RHSA-2015:1003 - Security Advisory

Topic

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

Red Hat Product Security 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.

An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the way QEMU's virtual
Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) handled FIFO buffer access while processing
certain FDC commands. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash
the guest or, potentially, execute arbitrary code on the host with the
privileges of the host's QEMU process corresponding to the guest.
(CVE-2015-3456)

Red Hat would like to thank Jason Geffner of CrowdStrike for reporting
this issue.

All kvm users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain a backported patch to 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.

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/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 - 1218611 - CVE-2015-3456 qemu: fdc: out-of-bounds fifo buffer memory access

CVEs

• CVE-2015-3456

References

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