CentOS 5 : kernel (CESA-2008:0612)

high Nessus Plugin ID 43701

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Synopsis

The remote CentOS host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

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

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

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

These updated packages fix the following security issues :

* a possible kernel memory leak was found in the Linux kernel Simple Internet Transition (SIT) INET6 implementation. This could allow a local unprivileged user to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2008-2136, Important)

* a flaw was found in the Linux kernel setrlimit system call, when setting RLIMIT_CPU to a certain value. This could allow a local unprivileged user to bypass the CPU time limit. (CVE-2008-1294, Moderate)

* multiple NULL pointer dereferences were found in various Linux kernel network drivers. These drivers were missing checks for terminal validity, which could allow privilege escalation. (CVE-2008-2812, Moderate)

These updated packages fix the following bugs :

* the GNU libc stub resolver is a minimal resolver that works with Domain Name System (DNS) servers to satisfy requests from applications for names. The GNU libc stub resolver did not specify a source UDP port, and therefore used predictable port numbers. This could have made DNS spoofing attacks easier.

The Linux kernel has been updated to implement random UDP source ports where none are specified by an application. This allows applications, such as those using the GNU libc stub resolver, to use random UDP source ports, helping to make DNS spoofing attacks harder.

* when using certain hardware, a bug in UART_BUG_TXEN may have caused incorrect hardware detection, causing data flow to '/dev/ttyS1' to hang.

* a 50-75% drop in NFS server rewrite performance, compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6, has been resolved.

* due a bug in the fast userspace mutex code, while one thread fetched a pointer, another thread may have removed it, causing the first thread to fetch the wrong pointer, possibly causing a system crash.

* on certain Hitachi hardware, removing the 'uhci_hcd' module caused a kernel oops, and the following error :

BUG: warning at arch/ia64/kernel/iosapic.c:1001/iosapic_unregister_intr()

Even after the 'uhci_hcd' module was reloaded, there was no access to USB devices. As well, on systems that have legacy interrupts, 'acpi_unregister_gsi' incorrectly called 'iosapci_unregister_intr()', causing warning messages to be logged.

* when a page was mapped with mmap(), and 'PROT_WRITE' was the only 'prot' argument, the first read of that page caused a segmentation fault. If the page was read after it was written to, no fault occurred. This was incompatible with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 behavior.

* due to a NULL pointer dereference in powernowk8_init(), a panic may have occurred.

* certain error conditions handled by the bonding sysfs interface could have left rtnl_lock() unbalanced, either by locking and returning without unlocking, or by unlocking when it did not lock, possibly causing a 'kernel: RTNL: assertion failed at net/core/fib_rules.c' error.

* the kernel currently expects a maximum of six Machine Check Exception (MCE) banks to be exposed by a CPU. Certain CPUs have 7 or more, which may have caused the MCE to be incorrectly reported.

* a race condition in UNIX domain sockets may have caused recv() to return zero. For clusters, this may have caused unexpected failovers.

* msgrcv() frequently returned an incorrect 'ERESTARTNOHAND (514)' error number.

* on certain Intel Itanium-based systems, when kdump was configured to halt the system after a dump operation, after the 'System halted.' output, the kernel continued to output endless 'soft lockup' messages.

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

Solution

Update the affected kernel packages.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?1743cd03

http://www.nessus.org/u?d3470ba2

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 43701

File Name: centos_RHSA-2008-0612.nasl

Version: 1.16

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 1/6/2010

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-pae, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-pae-devel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-doc, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-xen, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:kernel-xen-devel, cpe:/o:centos:centos:5

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/CentOS/release, Host/CentOS/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/6/2008

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/2/2008

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2008-1294, CVE-2008-2136, CVE-2008-2812

BID: 29235, 30076

CWE: 20, 399

RHSA: 2008:0612