Synopsis

Moderate: ppc64-diag security, bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Moderate

Topic

Updated ppc64-diag packages that fix two security issues, several bugs, and
add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Red Hat Product Security 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 ppc64-diag packages provide diagnostic tools for Linux on the 64-bit
PowerPC platforms. The platform diagnostics write events reported by the
firmware to the service log, provide automated responses to urgent events,
and notify system administrators or connected service frameworks about the
reported events.

Multiple insecure temporary file use flaws were found in the way the
ppc64-diag utility created certain temporary files. A local attacker could
possibly use either of these flaws to perform a symbolic link attack and
overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user running
ppc64-diag, or obtain sensitive information from the temporary files.
(CVE-2014-4038, CVE-2014-4039)

The ppc64-diag packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.6.7, which
provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.
(BZ#1148142)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the "explain_syslog" and "syslog_to_svclog" commands failed

with a "No such file or directory" error message. With this update, the
ppc64-diag package specifies the location of the message_catalog directory
correctly, which prevents the described error from occurring. (BZ#1139655)

• Prior to this update, the /var/lock/subsys/rtas_errd file was incorrectly

labeled for SELinux as "system_u:object_r:var_lock_t:s0". This update
corrects the SELinux label to "system_u:object_r:rtas_errd_var_lock_t:s0".
(BZ#1131501)

Users of ppc64-diag are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
correct these issues and add these enhancements.

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

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64

Fixes

• BZ - 1109371 - CVE-2014-4038 CVE-2014-4039 ppc64-diag: multiple temporary file races
• BZ - 1131501 - Mislabeled file '/var/lock/subsys/rtas_errd' found

CVEs

• CVE-2014-4039
• CVE-2014-4038

References