Synopsis
The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.
Description
Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue and one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Long Life.
Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
* It was found that the Linux kernel's implementation of vectored pipe read and write functionality did not take into account the I/O vectors that were already processed when retrying after a failed atomic access operation, potentially resulting in memory corruption due to an I/O vector array overrun. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system. (CVE-2015-1805, Important)
The security impact of this issue was discovered by Red Hat.
This update also fixes the following bug :
* Previously, the signal delivery paths did not clear the TS_USEDFPU flag, which could cause problems in the switch_to() function and lead to floating-point unit (FPU) corruption. With this update, TS_USEDFPU is cleared as expected, and FPU is no longer under threat of corruption. (BZ#1214237)
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.