Issued:

2012-12-04

Updated:

2012-12-04

RHSA-2012:1541 - Moderate: kernel security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Moderate: kernel security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Moderate

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix two security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Extended Update Support.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

Description

These packages contain the Linux kernel.

Security fixes:

• A malicious NFSv4 server could return a crafted reply to a GETACL request, causing a denial of service on the client. (CVE-2011-4131, Moderate)

• A flaw in the dl2k driver could allow a local, unprivileged user to issue potentially harmful IOCTLs, possibly causing Ethernet adapters using the driver to malfunction (such as losing network connectivity). (CVE-2012-2313, Low)

Red Hat would like to thank Andy Adamson for reporting CVE-2011-4131, and Stephan Mueller for reporting CVE-2012-2313.

Bug fixes:

• A kernel oops occurred in the nf_nat code when a bogus pointer was dereferenced in the nf_conn_nat structure. Consequently, if Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) was performed, incorrect information could be received by other CTS (Clear to Send) signals. A conntrack entry is now placed in the source hash after SNAT has been completed, which prevents the described problems. (BZ#865715)

• Previously, the ixgbe_setup_tc() function was called recursively when the set_state() CEE (Convergence Enhanced Ethernet) API routine was called in IEEE DCBX (Data Center Bridging eXchange) mode. This is considered unsafe according to the IEEE standards. With this update, the ixgbe driver has been modified to no longer call the set_state() routine in IEEE DCBX mode. The driver now calls routines of the PFC (Priority-based Flow Control) and ETS (Enhanced Transmission Selection) extensions instead of the CEE extension routines in IEEE DCBX mode. (BZ#867859)

• A Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) race condition between the munmap() and exit() function could lead to false-positive triggering of the BUG_ON() macro if Transparent Huge Pages (THP) were enabled. This update fixes the race condition, which avoids false-positive triggering of the BUG_ON() macro in this scenario. (BZ#875121)

• The kernel allows high priority real time tasks, such as tasks scheduled with the SCHED_FIFO policy, to be throttled. Previously, the CPU stop tasks were scheduled as high priority real time tasks and could be thus throttled accordingly. However, the replenishment timer, which is responsible for clearing a throttle flag on tasks, could be pending on the just disabled CPU. This could lead to the situation that the throttled tasks were never scheduled to run. Consequently, if any of such tasks was needed to complete the CPU disabling, the system became unresponsive. This update introduces a new scheduler class, which gives a task the highest possible system priority and such a task cannot be throttled. The stop-task scheduling class is now used for the CPU stop tasks, and the system shutdown completes as expected in the scenario described. (BZ#876078)

• Previously, XFS log buffers were handled incorrectly so that XFS could, in certain circumstances, incorrectly read metadata from the journal during XFS log recovery. As a consequence, XFS log recovery terminated with an error message and prevented the file system from being mounted. This problem could result in a loss of data if the user forcibly emptied the log to allow the file system to be mounted. This update ensures that metadata is read correctly from the log and journal recovery thus completes successfully, and the file system mounts as expected. (BZ#876498)

• Previously, kernel was allowed to reduce the number of unnecessary commit calls by skipping the commit when there was a large number of outstanding pages being written. However, a test on the number of commits (ncommit) did not properly handle the edge case when ncommit was zero. Consequently, inodes sometimes remained on the sb->s_dirty list and could not be freed by the inode cache shrinker. As a result, the nfs_inode_cache structure grew very large over time. With this update, the call to the nfs_write_inode() function is immediately returned when commit == 0, thus fixing this bug. (BZ#877394)

Solution

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.

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

To install kernel packages manually, use "rpm -ivh [package]". Do not use "rpm -Uvh" as that will remove the running kernel binaries from your system. You may use "rpm -e" to remove old kernels after determining that the new kernel functions properly on your system.

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• python-perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• python-perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-doc-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.noarch.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• python-perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.src.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• python-perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-common-i686-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-firmware-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.noarch.rpm
• python-perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• python-perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• python-perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• perf-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-bootwrapper-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.s390x.rpm
• perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm
• python-perf-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.32-220.30.1.el6.i686.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 747106
• This content is not included.BZ - 818820

CVEs

• CVE-2011-4131
• CVE-2012-2313

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.