6.6 - RHSA-2008:0972

Problem Description:

Updated kernel packages that resolve several security issues and fix various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

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 AS version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, ppc, s390, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop version 4 - i386, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, x86_64

3. Description:

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

* a flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Direct-IO implementation. This could have allowed a local unprivileged user to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2007-6716, Important)

* when running ptrace in 31-bit mode on an IBM S/390 or IBM System z kernel, a local unprivileged user could cause a denial of service by reading from or writing into a padding area in the user_regs_struct32 structure. (CVE-2008-1514, Important)

* the do_truncate() and generic_file_splice_write() functions did not clear the setuid and setgid bits. This could have allowed a local unprivileged user to obtain access to privileged information. (CVE-2008-4210, Important)

* Tobias Klein reported a missing check in the Linux kernel's Open Sound System (OSS) implementation. This deficiency could have led to an information leak. (CVE-2008-3272, Moderate)

* a potential denial of service attack was discovered in the Linux kernel's PWC USB video driver. A local unprivileged user could have used this flaw to bring the kernel USB subsystem into the busy-waiting state. (CVE-2007-5093, Low)

* the ext2 and ext3 file systems code failed to properly handle corrupted data structures, leading to a possible local denial of service issue when read or write operations were performed. (CVE-2008-3528, Low)

In addition, these updated packages fix the following bugs:

* when using the CIFS "forcedirectio" option, appending to an open file on a CIFS share resulted in that file being overwritten with the data to be appended.

* a kernel panic occurred when a device with PCI ID 8086:10c8 was present on a system with a loaded ixgbe driver.

* due to an aacraid driver regression, the kernel failed to boot when trying to load the aacraid driver and printed the following error message: "aac_srb: aac_fib_send failed with status: 8195".

* due to an mpt driver regression, when RAID 1 was configured on Primergy systems with an LSI SCSI IME 53C1020/1030 controller, the kernel panicked during boot.

* the mpt driver produced a large number of extraneous debugging messages when performing a "Host reset" operation.

* due to a regression in the sym driver, the kernel panicked when a SCSI hot swap was performed using MCP18 hardware.

* all cores on a multi-core system now scale their frequencies in accordance with the policy set by the system's CPU frequency governor.

* the netdump subsystem suffered from several stability issues. These are addressed in this updated kernel.

* under certain conditions, the ext3 file system reported a negative count of used blocks.

* reading /proc/self/mem incorrectly returned "Invalid argument" instead of "input/output error" due to a regression.

* under certain conditions, the kernel panicked when a USB device was removed while the system was busy accessing the device.

* a race condition in the kernel could have led to a kernel crash during the creation of a new process.

All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct 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/):

306591 - CVE-2007-5093 kernel PWC driver DoS 438147 - CVE-2008-1514 kernel: ptrace: Padding area write - unprivileged kernel crash 455770 - RHEL 4.6: scsi hot swap broken (sym / Nokia MCP18) 457995 - CVE-2008-3272 kernel snd_seq_oss_synth_make_info leak 459577 - CVE-2008-3528 Linux kernel ext[234] directory corruption denial of service 461082 - CVE-2007-6716 kernel: dio: zero struct dio with kzalloc instead of manually 463661 - CVE-2008-4210 kernel: open() call allows setgid bit when user is not in new file's group 464494 - CIFS option forcedirectio fails to allow the appending of text to files. 464496 - Negative used blocks reported with ext3 on RHEL4 464747 - regression, rhel4.7+, on the try to read /proc/self/mem getting improper return value 465232 - [4.7] When the USB device is removed while the system is accessing the USB device, the panic is done. 465265 - mpt 3.12.19.00rh on RHEL4.7 causes panic if a RAID 1 is configured. 465735 - RHEL 4.7 ixgbe driver has a recursive stack corruption problem. 466113 - netdump fails when bnx2 has remote copper PHY - Badness in local_bh_enable at kernel/softirq.c:141 466214 - kernel BUG at kernel/signal.c:369! (attempt to free tsk->signal twice) 466217 - [REG][4.7]Outputting large amount of log message when issuing host reset to adapter. 468151 - aac_fib_send failed with status 8195 469647 - add multi-core support to cpufreq driver