Synopsis

Important: kernel-rt security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

An update for kernel-rt is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

Description

The kernel-rt packages provide the Real Time Linux Kernel, which enables fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements.

Security Fix(es):

• A race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel's memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings. An unprivileged, local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system. (CVE-2016-5195, Important)
• Linux kernel built with the 802.1Q/802.1ad VLAN(CONFIG_VLAN_8021Q) OR Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network(CONFIG_VXLAN) with Transparent Ethernet Bridging(TEB) GRO support, is vulnerable to a stack overflow issue. It could occur while receiving large packets via GRO path; As an unlimited recursion could unfold in both VLAN and TEB modules, leading to a stack corruption in the kernel. (CVE-2016-7039, Important)

Red Hat would like to thank Phil Oester for reporting CVE-2016-5195.

Solution

For details on how to apply this update, which includes the changes described in this advisory, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time for NFV 7 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 1375944 - CVE-2016-7039 kernel: remotely triggerable unbounded recursion in the vlan gro code leading to a kernel crash
• BZ - 1384344 - CVE-2016-5195 kernel: mm: privilege escalation via MAP_PRIVATE COW breakage

CVEs

• CVE-2016-5195
• CVE-2016-7039
• CVE-2016-8666

References