RHSA-2015:2671 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated jakarta-commons-collections 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

The Jakarta/Apache Commons Collections library provides new interfaces,
implementations, and utilities to extend the features of the Java
Collections Framework.

It was found that the Apache commons-collections library permitted code
execution when deserializing objects involving a specially constructed
chain of classes. A remote attacker could use this flaw to execute
arbitrary code with the permissions of the application using the
commons-collections library. (CVE-2015-7501)

With this update, deserialization of certain classes in the
commons-collections library is no longer allowed. Applications that require
those classes to be deserialized can use the system property
"org.apache.commons.collections.enableUnsafeSerialization" to re-enable
their deserialization.

Further information about this security flaw may be found at:
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2045023

All users of jakarta-commons-collections are advised to upgrade to these
updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue.
All running applications using the commons-collections library must be
restarted for the update to 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

Affected Products

• 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 Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 1279330 - CVE-2015-7501 apache-commons-collections: InvokerTransformer code execution during deserialisation

CVEs

• CVE-2015-7501

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important
• https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2045023