Issued:

2009-02-10

Updated:

2009-02-10

RHSA-2009:0264 - Important: kernel security update

Synopsis

Important: kernel security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Important

Topic

Updated kernel packages that resolve several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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.

This update addresses the following security issues:

• a memory leak in keyctl handling. A local user could use this flaw to deplete kernel memory, eventually leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-0031, Important)

• a buffer overflow in the Linux kernel Partial Reliable Stream Control Transmission Protocol (PR-SCTP) implementation. This could, potentially, lead to a denial of service if a Forward-TSN chunk is received with a large stream ID. (CVE-2009-0065, Important)

• a flaw when handling heavy network traffic on an SMP system with many cores. An attacker who could send a large amount of network traffic could create a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5713, Important)

• the code for the HFS and HFS Plus (HFS+) file systems failed to properly handle corrupted data structures. This could, potentially, lead to a local denial of service. (CVE-2008-4933, CVE-2008-5025, Low)

• a flaw was found in the HFS Plus (HFS+) file system implementation. This could, potentially, lead to a local denial of service when write operations are performed. (CVE-2008-4934, Low)

In addition, these updated packages fix the following bugs:

• when using the nfsd daemon in a clustered setup, kernel panics appeared seemingly at random. These panics were caused by a race condition in the device-mapper mirror target.

• the clock_gettime(CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID, ) syscall returned a smaller timespec value than the result of previous clock_gettime() function execution, which resulted in a negative, and nonsensical, elapsed time value.

• nfs_create_rpc_client was called with a "flavor" parameter which was usually ignored and ended up unconditionally creating the RPC client with an AUTH_UNIX flavor. This caused problems on AUTH_GSS mounts when the credentials needed to be refreshed. The credops did not match the authorization type, which resulted in the credops dereferencing an incorrect part of the AUTH_UNIX rpc_auth struct.

• when copy_user_c terminated prematurely due to reading beyond the end of the user buffer and the kernel jumped to the exception table entry, the rsi register was not cleared. This resulted in exiting back to user code with garbage in the rsi register.

• the hexdump data in s390dbf traces was incomplete. The length of the data traced was incorrect and the SAN payload was read from a different place then it was written to.

• when using connected mode (CM) in IPoIB on ehca2 hardware, it was not possible to transmit any data.

• when an application called fork() and pthread_create() many times and, at some point, a thread forked a child and then attempted to call the setpgid() function, then this function failed and returned and ESRCH error value.

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. Note: for this update to take effect, the system must be rebooted.

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/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-PAE-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-doc-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.noarch.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-PAE-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.src.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.i386.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5.ia64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 469631
• This content is not included.BZ - 469640
• This content is not included.BZ - 470769
• This content is not included.BZ - 477744
• This content is not included.BZ - 478800
• This content is not included.BZ - 479812
• This content is not included.BZ - 480576
• This content is not included.BZ - 480592
• This content is not included.BZ - 480996
• This content is not included.BZ - 481117
• This content is not included.BZ - 481119
• This content is not included.BZ - 481120
• This content is not included.BZ - 481122

CVEs

• CVE-2008-4933
• CVE-2008-4934
• CVE-2008-5025
• CVE-2009-0065
• CVE-2009-0031
• CVE-2008-5713

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.