Synopsis
The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.
Description
Updated openssl packages that fix multiple security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.
OpenSSL is a toolkit that implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols, as well as a full-strength, general purpose cryptography library.
It was discovered that OpenSSL leaked timing information when decrypting TLS/SSL and DTLS protocol encrypted records when CBC-mode cipher suites were used. A remote attacker could possibly use this flaw to retrieve plain text from the encrypted packets by using a TLS/SSL or DTLS server as a padding oracle. (CVE-2013-0169)
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the OCSP response verification in OpenSSL. A malicious OCSP server could use this flaw to crash applications performing OCSP verification by sending a specially crafted response. (CVE-2013-0166)
It was discovered that the TLS/SSL protocol could leak information about plain text when optional compression was used. An attacker able to control part of the plain text sent over an encrypted TLS/SSL connection could possibly use this flaw to recover other portions of the plain text. (CVE-2012-4929)
Note: This update disables zlib compression, which was previously enabled in OpenSSL by default. Applications using OpenSSL now need to explicitly enable zlib compression to use it.
It was found that OpenSSL read certain environment variables even when used by a privileged (setuid or setgid) application. A local attacker could use this flaw to escalate their privileges. No application shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 was affected by this problem. (BZ#839735)
All OpenSSL users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues. For the update to take effect, all services linked to the OpenSSL library must be restarted, or the system rebooted.
Solution
Update the affected packages.