RHEL 5 : kernel (RHSA-2014:0772)

high Nessus Plugin ID 79031

Synopsis

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

Description

Updated kernel packages that fix three security issues and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 Extended Update Support.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important 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.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's floppy driver handled user space provided data in certain error code paths while processing FDRAWCMD IOCTL commands. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to free (using the kfree() function) arbitrary kernel memory. (CVE-2014-1737, Important)

* It was found that the Linux kernel's floppy driver leaked internal kernel memory addresses to user space during the processing of the FDRAWCMD IOCTL command. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to obtain information about the kernel heap arrangement. (CVE-2014-1738, Low)

Note: A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use these two flaws (CVE-2014-1737 in combination with CVE-2014-1738) to escalate their privileges on the system.

* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's TCP/IP protocol suite implementation handled TCP packets with both the SYN and FIN flags set. A remote attacker could use this flaw to consume an excessive amount of resources on the target system, potentially resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2012-6638, Moderate)

Red Hat would like to thank Matthew Daley for reporting CVE-2014-1737 and CVE-2014-1738.

This update also fixes the following bugs :

* While under heavy load, some Fibre Channel storage devices, such as Hitachi and HP Open-V series, can send a logout (LOGO) message to the host system. However, due to a bug in the lpfc driver, this could result in a loss of active paths to the storage and the paths could not be recovered without manual intervention. This update corrects the lpfc driver to ensure automatic recovery of the lost paths to the storage in this scenario. (BZ#1096060)

* A bug in the futex system call could result in an overflow when passing a very large positive timeout. As a consequence, the FUTEX_WAIT operation did not work as intended and the system call was timing out immediately. A backported patch fixes this bug by limiting very large positive timeouts to the maximal supported value.
(BZ#1091831)

All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014:0772

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2012-6638

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2014-1737

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2014-1738

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 79031

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2014-0772.nasl

Version: 1.11

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/8/2014

Updated: 1/14/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-pae-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo-common, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-kdump-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5.9

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

Patch Publication Date: 6/19/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-6638, CVE-2014-1737, CVE-2014-1738

RHSA: 2014:0772