6.8 - RHSA-2016:0495

Problem Description:

Updated nss-util packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, 6.4, and 6.5 Advanced Update Support, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 and 7.1 Extended Update Support.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Critical 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:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode EUS (v. 7.1) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional EUS (v. 7.1) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node EUS (v. 6.6) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional EUS (v. 6.6) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server AUS (v. 6.2) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server AUS (v. 6.4) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server AUS (v. 6.5) - x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 6.6) - i386, ppc64, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 7.1) - ppc64, ppc64le, s390x, x86_64

3. Description:

Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to support the cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications. The nss-util package provides a set of utilities for NSS and the Softoken module.

A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way NSS parsed certain ASN.1 structures. An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially crafted certificate which, when parsed by NSS, could cause it to crash, or execute arbitrary code, using the permissions of the user running an application compiled against the NSS library. (CVE-2016-1950)

Red Hat would like to thank the Mozilla project for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Francis Gabriel as the original reporter.

All nss-util users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue. For the update to take effect, all applications linked to the nss and nss-util libraries must be restarted, or the system rebooted.

4. Solution:

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

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

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

1310509 - CVE-2016-1950 nss: Heap buffer overflow vulnerability in ASN1 certificate parsing (MFSA 2016-35)