Issued:
2013-04-09
Updated:
2013-04-09

RHSA-2013:0727 - Important: kvm security update

Synopsis

Important: kvm security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Important

Topic

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

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important 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

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. KVM is a Linux kernel module built for the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel.

A flaw was found in the way KVM handled guest time updates when the buffer the guest registered by writing to the MSR_KVM_SYSTEM_TIME machine state register (MSR) crossed a page boundary. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host or, potentially, escalate their privileges, allowing them to execute arbitrary code at the host kernel level. (CVE-2013-1796)

A potential use-after-free flaw was found in the way KVM handled guest time updates when the GPA (guest physical address) the guest registered by writing to the MSR_KVM_SYSTEM_TIME machine state register (MSR) fell into a movable or removable memory region of the hosting user-space process (by default, QEMU-KVM) on the host. If that memory region is deregistered from KVM using KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION and the allocated virtual memory reused, a privileged guest user could potentially use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the host. (CVE-2013-1797)

A flaw was found in the way KVM emulated IOAPIC (I/O Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller). A missing validation check in the ioapic_read_indirect() function could allow a privileged guest user to crash the host, or read a substantial portion of host kernel memory. (CVE-2013-1798)

Red Hat would like to thank Andrew Honig of Google for reporting all of these issues.

All users of kvm are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. Note that the procedure in the Solution section must be performed before this update will 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

The following procedure must be performed before this update will take effect:

  1. Stop all KVM guest virtual machines.

  2. Either reboot the hypervisor machine or, as the root user, remove (using "modprobe -r [module]") and reload (using "modprobe [module]") all of the following modules which are currently running (determined using "lsmod"): kvm, ksm, kvm-intel or kvm-amd.

  3. Restart the KVM guest virtual machines.

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support5.9x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS5.9x86_64

Updated Packages

  • kvm-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm
  • kvm-qemu-img-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm
  • kmod-kvm-debug-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm
  • kvm-tools-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm
  • kvm-83-262.el5_9.3.src.rpm
  • kvm-debuginfo-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm
  • kmod-kvm-83-262.el5_9.3.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

References

Additional information