5 - RHSA-2013:0769

Problem Description:

Updated glibc packages that fix two security issues and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

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

3. Description:

The glibc packages provide the standard C libraries (libc), POSIX thread libraries (libpthread), standard math libraries (libm), and the Name Server Caching Daemon (nscd) used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function correctly.

It was found that getaddrinfo() did not limit the amount of stack memory used during name resolution. An attacker able to make an application resolve an attacker-controlled hostname or IP address could possibly cause the application to exhaust all stack memory and crash. (CVE-2013-1914)

A flaw was found in the regular expression matching routines that process multibyte character input. If an application utilized the glibc regular expression matching mechanism, an attacker could provide specially-crafted input that, when processed, would cause the application to crash. (CVE-2013-0242)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* The improvements RHSA-2012:1207 made to the accuracy of floating point functions in the math library caused performance regressions for those functions. The performance regressions were analyzed and a fix was applied that retains the current accuracy but reduces the performance penalty to acceptable levels. Refer to Red Hat Knowledge solution 229993, linked to in the References, for further information. (BZ#950535)

* It was possible that a memory location freed by the localization code could be accessed immediately after, resulting in a crash. The fix ensures that the application does not crash by avoiding the invalid memory access. (BZ#951493)

Users of glibc are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

4. 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

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

905874 - CVE-2013-0242 glibc: Buffer overrun (DoS) in regexp matcher by processing multibyte characters 947882 - CVE-2013-1914 glibc: Stack (frame) overflow in getaddrinfo() when processing entry mapping to long list of address structures