Issued:

2013-11-21

Updated:

2013-11-21

RHSA-2013:1732 - Low: busybox security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Low: busybox security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Low

Topic

Updated busybox packages that fix one security issue and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

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

BusyBox provides a single binary that includes versions of a large number of system commands, including a shell. This can be very useful for recovering from certain types of system failures, particularly those involving broken shared libraries.

It was found that the mdev BusyBox utility could create certain directories within /dev with world-writable permissions. A local unprivileged user could use this flaw to manipulate portions of the /dev directory tree. (CVE-2013-1813)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, due to a too eager string size optimization on the IBM System z architecture, the "wc" BusyBox command failed after processing standard input with the following error:

  wc: : No such file or directory

This bug was fixed by disabling the string size optimization and the "wc" command works properly on IBM System z architectures. (BZ#820097)

• Prior to this update, the "mknod" command was unable to create device nodes with a major or minor number larger than 255. Consequently, the kdump utility failed to handle such a device. The underlying source code has been modified, and it is now possible to use the "mknod" command to create device nodes with a major or minor number larger than 255. (BZ#859817)

• If a network installation from an NFS server was selected, the "mount" command used the UDP protocol by default. If only TCP mounts were supported by the server, this led to a failure of the mount command. As a result, Anaconda could not continue with the installation. This bug is now fixed and NFS mount operations default to the TCP protocol. (BZ#855832)

All busybox users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct 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/site/articles/11258

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• busybox-1.15.1-20.el6.src.rpm
• busybox-1.15.1-20.el6.i686.rpm
• busybox-1.15.1-20.el6.ppc64.rpm
• busybox-1.15.1-20.el6.x86_64.rpm
• busybox-petitboot-1.15.1-20.el6.i686.rpm
• busybox-1.15.1-20.el6.s390x.rpm
• busybox-petitboot-1.15.1-20.el6.x86_64.rpm
• busybox-petitboot-1.15.1-20.el6.s390x.rpm
• busybox-petitboot-1.15.1-20.el6.ppc64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 820097
• This content is not included.BZ - 919608

CVEs

• CVE-2013-1813

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#low

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.