Issued:

2009-03-19

Updated:

2011-05-05

RHSA-2009:0382 - Moderate: libvirt security update

Synopsis

Moderate: libvirt security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Moderate

Topic

Updated libvirt packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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

[Updated 5th May 2011] After installing this update and restarting the libvirtd service, the "virsh attach-disk" command failed. Rebooting guest systems after installing the update resolved the issue. The erratum text has been updated to reflect that guest systems must be rebooted. Future updates will advise if a guest reboot is needed. No changes have been made to the packages.

Description

libvirt is a C API for managing and interacting with the virtualization capabilities of Linux and other operating systems. libvirt also provides tools for remotely managing virtualized systems.

The libvirtd daemon was discovered to not properly check user connection permissions before performing certain privileged actions, such as requesting migration of an unprivileged guest domain to another system. A local user able to establish a read-only connection to libvirtd could use this flaw to perform actions that should be restricted to read-write connections. (CVE-2008-5086)

libvirt_proxy, a setuid helper application allowing non-privileged users to communicate with the hypervisor, was discovered to not properly validate user requests. Local users could use this flaw to cause a stack-based buffer overflow in libvirt_proxy, possibly allowing them to run arbitrary code with root privileges. (CVE-2009-0036)

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches which resolve these issues. After installing the update, libvirtd must be restarted manually (for example, by issuing a "service libvirtd restart" command), and guest systems rebooted, for this change to take effect.

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

• libvirt-python-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
• libvirt-devel-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
• libvirt-devel-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.ia64.rpm
• libvirt-python-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.ia64.rpm
• libvirt-python-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
• libvirt-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.ia64.rpm
• libvirt-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
• libvirt-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.src.rpm
• libvirt-devel-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
• libvirt-0.3.3-14.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 476560
• This content is not included.BZ - 484947

CVEs

• CVE-2009-0036
• CVE-2008-5086

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate

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.