This update fixes the following security issues :

  - A use-after-free flaw was found in the madvise() system     call implementation in the Linux kernel. A local,     unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial     of service or, potentially, escalate their privileges.
    (CVE-2012-3511, Moderate)

  - A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's TCP/IP     protocol suite implementation handled IPv6 sockets that     used the UDP_CORK option. A local, unprivileged user     could use this flaw to cause a denial of service.
    (CVE-2013-4162, Moderate)

  - An information leak flaw in the Linux kernel could allow     a local, unprivileged user to leak kernel memory to     user-space. (CVE-2013-2141, Low)

This update also fixes the following bugs :

  - A bug in the be2net driver prevented communication     between NICs using be2net. This update applies a patch     addressing this problem along with several other     upstream patches that fix various other problems.
    Traffic between NICs using the be2net driver now     proceeds as expected.

  - A recent patch fixing a problem that prevented     communication between NICs using the be2net driver     caused the firmware of NICs to become unresponsive, and     thus triggered a kernel panic. The problem was caused by     unnecessary usage of a hardware workaround that allows     skipping VLAN tag insertion. A patch has been applied     and the workaround is now used only when the     multi-channel configuration is enabled on the NIC. Note     that the bug only affected the NICs with firmware     version 4.2.xxxx.

  - A bug in the autofs4 mount expiration code could cause     the autofs4 module to falsely report a busy tree of NFS     mounts as 'not in use'. Consequently, automount     attempted to unmount the tree and failed with a 'failed     to umount offset' error, leaving the mount tree to     appear as empty directories. A patch has been applied to     remove an incorrectly used autofs dentry mount check and     the aforementioned problem no longer occurs.

  - A race condition in the be_open function in the be2net     driver could trigger the BUG_ON() macro, which resulted     in a kernel panic. A patch addressing this problem has     been applied and the race condition is now avoided by     enabling polling before enabling interrupts globally.
    The kernel no longer panics in this situation.

The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

Scientific Linux Security Update : kernel on SL5.x i386/x86_64 (20130926)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 70188

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