Issued:

2007-12-19

Updated:

2007-12-19

RHSA-2007:1104 - Important: kernel security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Important: kernel security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Important

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix various security issues and several bugs in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel are now available.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Description

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

These updated packages fix the following security issues:

A flaw was found in the handling of IEEE 802.11 frames, which affected several wireless LAN modules. In certain situations, a remote attacker could trigger this flaw by sending a malicious packet over a wireless network, causing a denial of service (kernel crash). (CVE-2007-4997, Important)

A memory leak was found in the Red Hat Content Accelerator kernel patch. A local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service (memory exhaustion). (CVE-2007-5494, Important)

Additionally, the following bugs were fixed:

• when running the "ls -la" command on an NFSv4 mount point, incorrect file attributes, and outdated file size and timestamp information were returned. As well, symbolic links may have been displayed as actual files.

• a bug which caused the cmirror write path to appear deadlocked after a successful recovery, which may have caused syncing to hang, has been resolved.

• a kernel panic which occurred when manually configuring LCS interfaces on the IBM S/390 has been resolved.

• when running a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system, it was possible to mmap page at address 0 without flag MAP_FIXED set. This has been resolved in these updated packages.

• the Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) Watchdog did not increment the NMI interrupt counter in "/proc/interrupts" on systems running an AMD Opteron CPU. This caused systems running NMI Watchdog to restart at regular intervals.

• a bug which caused the diskdump utility to run very slowly on devices using Fusion MPT has been resolved.

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-smp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64iseries.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.s390x.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-smp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ia64.rpm
• kernel-smp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-xenU-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-hugemem-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-largesmp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ia64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-xenU-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.s390.rpm
• kernel-smp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.s390x.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ppc64iseries.rpm
• kernel-xenU-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-xenU-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-doc-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.noarch.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ia64.rpm
• kernel-hugemem-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.i686.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.src.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.s390.rpm
• kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.ia64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 315051
• This content is not included.BZ - 346341
• This content is not included.BZ - 371551
• This content is not included.BZ - 399661
• This content is not included.BZ - 400801
• This content is not included.BZ - 400811
• This content is not included.BZ - 404741
• This content is not included.BZ - 404781

CVEs

• CVE-2007-4997
• CVE-2007-5494

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.