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VPR Score: 8.9
Synopsis
The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.
Description
Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 Advanced Update Support.
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 bugs :
* The backlog data could previously not be consumed when the audit_log_start() function was running even if audit_log_start() called the wait_for_auditd() function to consume it. As only auditd could consume the backlog data, audit_log_start() terminated unexpectedly. Consequently, the system became unresponsive until the backlog timeout was up. With this update, audit_log_start() no longer terminates and the system shuts down and reboots gracefully in a timely manner. (BZ#1140489)
* Direct I/O writes extending a parallel file could previously race to update the size of the file. If the writes executed in the out-of-order manner, the file size could move backwards and push a previously completed write beyond EOF, causing it to be lost. With this update, file size updates are always executed in appropriate order, thus fixing this bug. (BZ#1218497)
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.