Issued:
2012-03-07
Updated:
2012-03-07

RHSA-2012:0370 - Important: xen security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Important: xen security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Important

Topic

Updated xen packages that fix one security issue and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Description

The xen packages contain administration tools and the xend service for managing the kernel-xen kernel for virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

A heap overflow flaw was found in the way QEMU emulated the e1000 network interface card. A privileged guest user in a virtual machine whose network interface is configured to use the e1000 emulated driver could use this flaw to crash QEMU or, possibly, escalate their privileges on the host. (CVE-2012-0029)

Red Hat would like to thank Nicolae Mogoreanu for reporting this issue.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

  • Adding support for jumbo frames introduced incorrect network device expansion when a bridge is created. The expansion worked correctly with the default configuration, but could have caused network setup failures when a user-defined network script was used. This update changes the expansion so network setup will not fail, even when a user-defined network script is used. (BZ#797191)

  • A bug was found in xenconsoled, the Xen hypervisor console daemon. If timestamp logging for this daemon was enabled (using both the XENCONSOLED_TIMESTAMP_HYPERVISOR_LOG and XENCONSOLED_TIMESTAMP_GUEST_LOG options in "/etc/sysconfig/xend"), xenconsoled could crash if the guest emitted a lot of information to its serial console in a short period of time. Eventually, the guest would freeze after the console buffer was filled due to the crashed xenconsoled. Timestamp logging is disabled by default. (BZ#797836)

All xen users are advised to 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 all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5ia64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5i386

Updated Packages

  • xen-devel-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.ia64.rpm
  • xen-debuginfo-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.i386.rpm
  • xen-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.ia64.rpm
  • xen-devel-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.x86_64.rpm
  • xen-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.x86_64.rpm
  • xen-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.src.rpm
  • xen-libs-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.x86_64.rpm
  • xen-debuginfo-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.ia64.rpm
  • xen-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.i386.rpm
  • xen-debuginfo-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.x86_64.rpm
  • xen-libs-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.i386.rpm
  • xen-libs-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.ia64.rpm
  • xen-devel-3.0.3-135.el5_8.2.i386.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

References

Additional information