6.8 - RHSA-2008:0089

Problem Description:

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and several bugs in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel are now available.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - i386, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - i386, ia64, noarch, ppc, s390x, x86_64

3. Description:

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

These new kernel packages fix the following security issues:

A flaw was found in the virtual filesystem (VFS). An unprivileged local user could truncate directories to which they had write permission; this could render the contents of the directory inaccessible. (CVE-2008-0001, Important)

A flaw was found in the Xen PAL emulation on Intel 64 platforms. A guest Hardware-assisted virtual machine (HVM) could read the arbitrary physical memory of the host system, which could make information available to unauthorized users. (CVE-2007-6416, Important)

A flaw was found in the way core dump files were created. If a local user can get a root-owned process to dump a core file into a directory, which the user has write access to, they could gain read access to that core file, potentially containing sensitive information. (CVE-2007-6206, Moderate)

A buffer overflow flaw was found in the CIFS virtual file system. A remote,authenticated user could issue a request that could lead to a denial of service. (CVE-2007-5904, Moderate)

A flaw was found in the "sysfs_readdir" function. A local user could create a race condition which would cause a denial of service (kernel oops). (CVE-2007-3104, Moderate)

As well, these updated packages fix the following bugs:

* running the "strace -f" command caused strace to hang, without displaying information about child processes.

* unmounting an unresponsive, interruptable NFS mount, for example, one mounted with the "intr" option, may have caused a system crash.

* a bug in the s2io.ko driver prevented VLAN devices from being added. Attempting to add a device to a VLAN, for example, running the "vconfig add [device-name] [vlan-id]" command caused vconfig to fail.

* tux used an incorrect open flag bit. This caused problems when building packages in a chroot environment, such as mock, which is used by the koji build system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.

4. Solution:

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

5. Bugs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/):

245777 - CVE-2007-3104 Null pointer to an inode in a dentry can cause an oops in sysfs_readdir [rhel-5.1.z] 372701 - CVE-2007-5904 Buffer overflow in CIFS VFS 396861 - CVE-2007-6206 Issue with core dump owner 412091 - [RHEL5 U1] [ia64] Kernel test failing under limited memory 414041 - NFS: System crashes trying to force umount a unresponsive, interruptible mount, which holds references to silly renamed files. 424181 - RHEL5.1 beta: System hung during warm boot-cycling test 425381 - CVE-2007-6416 [RHEL 5.2] [XEN/IA64] Security: vulnerability of copy_to_user in PAL emulation 426289 - [REG][5.1] VLAN add operation fail on s2io.ko driver(Neterion 10GbE card driver), 427994 - CVE-2007-3104 Null pointer to an inode in a dentry can cause an oops in sysfs_readdir 428791 - CVE-2008-0001 kernel: filesystem corruption by unprivileged user via directory truncation