Scientific Linux Security Update : selinux-policy enhancement update on SL6.x i386/x86_64 (20130221)

high Nessus Plugin ID 64959

Synopsis

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

Description

This update adds the following enhancements :

- With the Multi-Level Security (MLS) SELinux policy enabled, a user created with an SELinux MLS level could not login to the system through an |SSH| client. The SELinux policy rules have been updated to allow the user to log in to the system in the described scenario.

- When SELinux was in enforcing mode, an |OpenMPI| job, parallel universe in Red Hat Enterprise Linux MRG Grid, failed and was unable to access files in the |/var/lib/condor/execute/| directory. New SELinux policy rules have been added for |OpenMPI| jobs to allow a job to access files in this directory.

- Due to a regression, the root user was able to log in when the |ssh_sysadm_login| variable was set to |OFF| in MLS. To fix this bug, the |ssh_sysadm_login| SELinux boolean has been corrected to prevent the root user to log in when this variable is set to |OFF|.

- Previously, |cron| daemon jobs were set to run in the |cronjob_t| domain when the SELinux MLS policy was enabled. As a consequence, users could not run their |cron| jobs. The relevant policy rules have been modified and |cron| jobs now run in the user domain, thus fixing this bug.

- With SELinux in enforcing mode, during automatic testing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in FIPS mode, PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) attempted to run prelink on the |/sbin/unix_chkpwd| file to verify its hash.
Consequently, users could not log in to the system. The appropriate SELinux policy rules have been updated and a FIPS mode boolean has been added to resolve this bug.

- When the krb5 package was upgraded to version 1.9-33.el6_3.3 and Identity Management or FreeIPA was used, an attempt to start the |named| daemon terminated unexpectedly in enforcing mode. This update adapts the relevant SELinux policy to make sure the |named| daemon can be started in the described scenario.

- Previously, the |libselinux| library did not support setting the context based on the contents of |/etc/selinux/targeted/logins/$username/| directories.
Consequently, central management of SELinux limits did not work properly. With this update, the |/etc/selinux/targeted/logins/| directory is now handled by the selinux-policy packages as expected.

- In its current version, the |SSSD| daemon writes SELinux configuration files into the |/etc/selinux/<policy>/logins/| directory. The SELinux PAM module then uses this information to set the correct context for a remote user trying to log in. Due to a missing policy for this feature, |SSSD| could not write into this directory. With this update, a new security context for |/etc/selinux/<[policy]/logins/| has been added together with appropriate SELinux policy rules.

- With SELinux in enforcing mode, the |saslauthd| daemon process could not work properly if the |MECH=shadow| option was specified in the |/etc/sysconfig/saslauthd| file. This update fixes the relevant SELinux policy rules and allows |saslauthd| to use the |MECH=shadow| configuration option.

- When the |MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir| option was enabled either in the |/etc/procmailrc| or in |dovecot| configuration files, the |procmail| and |dovecot| services were not able to access a Maildir directory located in the home directory. This update fixes relevant SELinux policy rules to allow the |procmail|/|dovecot| service to read the configured |MAILDIR| option in |/etc/procmailrc|.

- When the |vsftpd| daemon is being stopped, it terminates all child |vsftpd| processes by sending the SIGTERM signal to them. When the parent process dies, the child process gets the SIGTERM signal. Previously, this signal was blocked by SELinux. This update fixes the relevant SELinux policy rules to allow |vsftpd| to terminate its child processes properly.

- Due to missing SELinux policy rules, the |rsync| daemon, which served an automounted home NFS directory, was not able to write files in this directory. To fix this bug, the |rsync| daemon has been changed into a home manager to allow the needed access permissions.

- Previously, SELinux prevented the puppet master from running passenger web application. To fix this bug, security context for the Passenger Apache module has been updated to reflect latest passenger paths to executables to make sure all applications using Passenger web applications run with the correct SELinux domain.

- When a user attempted to configure the |rsync| daemon to log directly to a specific file, missing SELinux policy rules let the user create the log file, but did not allow to append to it. With this update, SELinux policy rules have been added to allow |rsync| to append to a specific log file.

- When multiple devices were added into the system, udev rules restarted ktune services for each new device, so there were several restarts in a short time interval.
The multiple restarts triggered a race condition in the kernel which was not easily fixable. Currently, the tuned code is modified not to trigger more than one restart per 10 seconds and the race condition is avoided.

This update has been placed in the security tree to avoid selinux bugs.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?6c9c3df0

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 64959

File Name: sl_20130221_selinux_policy_enhancement_update_on_SL6_x.nasl

Version: 1.6

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 3/1/2013

Updated: 1/14/2021

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:selinux-policy, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:selinux-policy-doc, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:selinux-policy-minimum, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:selinux-policy-mls, p-cpe:/a:fermilab:scientific_linux:selinux-policy-targeted, 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: 2/21/2013

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/21/2013