Issued:

2010-01-19

Updated:

2010-01-19

RHSA-2010:0053 - 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 multiple security issues and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Extended Update Support.

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 fixes the following security issues:

• a flaw was found in the IPv6 Extension Header (EH) handling implementation in the Linux kernel. The skb->dst data structure was not properly validated in the ipv6_hop_jumbo() function. This could possibly lead to a remote denial of service. (CVE-2007-4567, Important)

• a flaw was found in each of the following Intel PRO/1000 Linux drivers in the Linux kernel: e1000 and e1000e. A remote attacker using packets larger than the MTU could bypass the existing fragment check, resulting in partial, invalid frames being passed to the network stack. These flaws could also possibly be used to trigger a remote denial of service. (CVE-2009-4536, CVE-2009-4538, Important)

• a flaw was found in the Realtek r8169 Ethernet driver in the Linux kernel. Receiving overly-long frames with a certain revision of the network cards supported by this driver could possibly result in a remote denial of service. (CVE-2009-4537, Important)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• on certain hardware, the igb driver was unable to detect link statuses correctly for Serializer-Deserializer (SERDES) interface Ethernet ports. This may have caused problems for network interface bonding, such as failover not occurring. (BZ#548023)

• in certain situations, kdump occasionally dumped a vmcore file with no registers on Intel Itanium systems that were under high disk I/O load. In these cases, this prevented the kernel stack backtrace in the vmcore from being viewed with the crash utility. (BZ#542581)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update 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

• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-doc-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.noarch.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.12.1.el5.s390x.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 542581
• This content is not included.BZ - 548023
• This content is not included.BZ - 548641
• This content is not included.BZ - 550907
• This content is not included.BZ - 551214
• This content is not included.BZ - 552126

CVEs

• CVE-2009-4536
• CVE-2009-4537
• CVE-2007-4567
• CVE-2009-4538

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.