Issued:
2012-07-18
Updated:
2012-07-18

RHSA-2012:1097 - Moderate: glibc security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Moderate: glibc security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Moderate

Topic

Updated glibc packages that fix one security issue and one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate 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 glibc packages provide the standard C and standard math libraries used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function properly.

It was discovered that the formatted printing functionality in glibc did not properly restrict the use of alloca(). This could allow an attacker to bypass FORTIFY_SOURCE protections and execute arbitrary code using a format string flaw in an application, even though these protections are expected to limit the impact of such flaws to an application abort. (CVE-2012-3406)

This update also fixes the following bug:

  • If a file or a string was in the IBM-930 encoding, and contained the invalid multibyte character "0xffff", attempting to use iconv() (or the iconv command) to convert that file or string to another encoding, such as UTF-8, resulted in a segmentation fault. With this update, the conversion code for the IBM-930 encoding recognizes this invalid character and calls an error handler, rather than causing a segmentation fault. (BZ#837896)

All users of glibc are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to fix these issues.

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 for Power, big endian5ppc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems5s390x
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

  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-utils-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-headers-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-headers-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • nscd-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • glibc-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-utils-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390.rpm
  • glibc-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • glibc-utils-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • glibc-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • nscd-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i686.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • nscd-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc64.rpm
  • nscd-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • glibc-utils-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-headers-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-devel-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc.rpm
  • glibc-headers-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.x86_64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ppc64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i686.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.src.rpm
  • glibc-headers-2.5-81.el5_8.4.ia64.rpm
  • glibc-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-common-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm
  • glibc-debuginfo-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390.rpm
  • glibc-utils-2.5-81.el5_8.4.s390x.rpm
  • nscd-2.5-81.el5_8.4.i386.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

References

Additional information