Synopsis
The remote CentOS host is missing one or more security updates.
Description
Updated kvm packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
Red Hat Product Security 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.
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. KVM is a Linux kernel module built for the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel.
It was found that KVM's Write to Model Specific Register (WRMSR) instruction emulation would write non-canonical values passed in by the guest to certain MSRs in the host's context. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host. (CVE-2014-3610)
A race condition flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's KVM subsystem handled PIT (Programmable Interval Timer) emulation. A guest user who has access to the PIT I/O ports could use this flaw to crash the host. (CVE-2014-3611)
Red Hat would like to thank Lars Bull of Google and Nadav Amit for reporting the CVE-2014-3610 issue, and Lars Bull of Google for reporting the CVE-2014-3611 issue.
All kvm users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. Note: The procedure in the Solution section must be performed before this update will take effect.
Solution
Update the affected kvm packages.