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RHEL 6 : nss, nss-util, and nspr (RHSA-2012:0973)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 59599

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Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

Updated nss, nss-util, and nspr packages that fix one security issue, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact.

Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to support the cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications. Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR) provides platform independence for non-GUI operating system facilities.

It was found that a Certificate Authority (CA) issued a subordinate CA certificate to its customer, that could be used to issue certificates for any name. This update renders the subordinate CA certificate as untrusted. (BZ#798533)

Note: This fix only applies to applications using the NSS Builtin Object Token. It does not render the certificates untrusted for applications that use the NSS library, but do not use the NSS Builtin Object Token.

The nspr package has been upgraded to upstream version 4.9, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#799193)

The nss-util package has been upgraded to upstream version 3.13.3, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#799192)

The nss package has been upgraded to upstream version 3.13.3, which provides numerous bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. In particular, SSL 2.0 is now disabled by default, support for SHA-224 has been added, PORT_ErrorToString and PORT_ErrorToName now return the error message and symbolic name of an NSS error code, and NSS_GetVersion now returns the NSS version string. (BZ#744070)

These updated nss, nss-util, and nspr packages also provide fixes for the following bugs :

* A PEM module internal function did not clean up memory when detecting a non-existent file name. Consequently, memory leaks in client code occurred. The code has been improved to deallocate such temporary objects and as a result the reported memory leakage is gone.
(BZ#746632)

* Recent changes to NSS re-introduced a problem where applications could not use multiple SSL client certificates in the same process.
Therefore, any attempt to run commands that worked with multiple SSL client certificates, such as the 'yum repolist' command, resulted in a re-negotiation handshake failure. With this update, a revised patch correcting this problem has been applied to NSS, and using multiple SSL client certificates in the same process is now possible again.
(BZ#761086)

* The PEM module did not fully initialize newly constructed objects with function pointers set to NULL. Consequently, a segmentation violation in libcurl was sometimes experienced while accessing a package repository. With this update, the code has been changed to fully initialize newly allocated objects. As a result, updates can now be installed without problems. (BZ#768669)

* A lack-of-robustness flaw caused the administration server for Red Hat Directory Server to terminate unexpectedly because the mod_nss module made nss calls before initializing nss as per the documented API. With this update, nss protects itself against being called before it has been properly initialized by the caller. (BZ#784674)

* Compilation errors occurred with some compilers when compiling code against NSS 3.13.1. The following error message was displayed :

pkcs11n.h:365:26: warning: '__GNUC_MINOR' is not defined

An upstream patch has been applied to improve the code and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#795693)

* Unexpected terminations were reported in the messaging daemon (qpidd) included in Red Hat Enterprise MRG after a recent update to nss. This occurred because qpidd made nss calls before initializing nss. These updated packages prevent qpidd and other affected processes that call nss without initializing as mandated by the API from crashing. (BZ#797426)

Users of NSS, NSPR, and nss-util are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these issues and add these enhancements.
After installing this update, applications using NSS, NSPR, or nss-util must be restarted for this update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012:0973

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 59599

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2012-0973.nasl

Version: 1.15

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 6/20/2012

Updated: 1/14/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nspr-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nspr-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nspr, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-pkcs11-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-sysinit, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-tools, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-util-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-util-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss-util, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nss

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

Patch Publication Date: 6/20/2012

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/20/2012

Reference Information

RHSA: 2012:0973