Synopsis

Important: kernel security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

An update for kernel is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Long
Life.

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 packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating
system.

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)

Red Hat would like to thank Phil Oester for reporting this issue.

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 Server - AUS 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 1384344 - CVE-2016-5195 kernel: mm: privilege escalation via MAP_PRIVATE COW breakage

CVEs

• CVE-2016-5195

References