7.6 - RHSA-2014:1974

Problem Description:

Updated rpm packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Important 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.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

RHEL Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) - i386, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - i386, ia64, ppc, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - i386, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) - i386, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) - i386, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) - noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) - i386, ppc64, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) - noarch Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) - i386, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) - noarch

3. Description:

The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful command line driven package management system capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and updating software packages. Each software package consists of an archive of files along with information about the package such as its version, description, and other information.

It was found that RPM wrote file contents to the target installation directory under a temporary name, and verified its cryptographic signature only after the temporary file has been written completely. Under certain conditions, the system interprets the unverified temporary file contents and extracts commands from it. This could allow an attacker to modify signed RPM files in such a way that they would execute code chosen by the attacker during package installation. (CVE-2013-6435)

This issue was discovered by Florian Weimer of Red Hat Product Security.

All rpm users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue. All running applications linked against the RPM library must be restarted for this update to take effect.

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/articles/11258

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

1039811 - CVE-2013-6435 rpm: race condition during the installation process