Scientific Linux Security Update : glibc on SL5.x i386/x86_64 (20120718)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 61368

Synopsis

The remote Scientific Linux host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The glibc packages provide the standard C and standard math libraries used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function properly.

It was discovered that the formatted printing functionality in glibc did not properly restrict the use of alloca(). This could allow an attacker to bypass FORTIFY_SOURCE protections and execute arbitrary code using a format string flaw in an application, even though these protections are expected to limit the impact of such flaws to an application abort. (CVE-2012-3406)

This update also fixes the following bug :

- If a file or a string was in the IBM-930 encoding, and contained the invalid multibyte character '0xffff', attempting to use iconv() (or the iconv command) to convert that file or string to another encoding, such as UTF-8, resulted in a segmentation fault. With this update, the conversion code for the IBM-930 encoding recognizes this invalid character and calls an error handler, rather than causing a segmentation fault.

All users of glibc are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to fix these issues.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?abb9952a

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 61368

File Name: sl_20120718_glibc_on_SL5_x.nasl

Version: 1.10

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 8/1/2012

Updated: 1/14/2021

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.8

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-common, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-debuginfo-common, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-devel, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-headers, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:glibc-utils, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:nscd, x-cpe:/o:fermilab:scientific_linux

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

Patch Publication Date: 7/18/2012

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/10/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-3406