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

This update fixes the following security issues :

  - Multiple buffer overflow flaws were found in the Linux     kernel's Management Module Support for Message Passing     Technology (MPT) based controllers. A local,     unprivileged user could use these flaws to cause a     denial of service, an information leak, or escalate     their privileges. (CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495,     Important)

  - A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Ethernet bonding     driver implementation. Packets coming in from network     devices that have more than 16 receive queues to a     bonding interface could cause a denial of service.
    (CVE-2011-1581, Important)

  - A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's networking     subsystem. If the number of packets received exceeded     the receiver's buffer limit, they were queued in a     backlog, consuming memory, instead of being discarded. A     remote attacker could abuse this flaw to cause a denial     of service (out-of-memory condition). (CVE-2010-4251,     Moderate)

  - A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Transparent Huge     Pages (THP) implementation. A local, unprivileged user     could abuse this flaw to allow the user stack (when it     is using huge pages) to grow and cause a denial of     service. (CVE-2011-0999, Moderate)

  - A flaw was found in the transmit methods (xmit) for the     loopback and InfiniBand transports in the Linux kernel's     Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) implementation. A local,     unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial     of service. (CVE-2011-1023, Moderate)

  - A flaw in the Linux kernel's Event Poll (epoll)     implementation could allow a local, unprivileged user to     cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1082, Moderate)

  - An inconsistency was found in the interaction between     the Linux kernel's method for allocating NFSv4 (Network     File System version 4) ACL data and the method by which     it was freed. This inconsistency led to a kernel panic     which could be triggered by a local, unprivileged user     with files owned by said user on an NFSv4 share.
    (CVE-2011-1090, Moderate)

  - A missing validation check was found in the Linux     kernel's mac_partition() implementation, used for     supporting file systems created on Mac OS operating     systems. A local attacker could use this flaw to cause a     denial of service by mounting a disk that contains     specially crafted partitions. (CVE-2011-1010, Low)

  - A buffer overflow flaw in the DEC Alpha OSF partition     implementation in the Linux kernel could allow a local     attacker to cause an information leak by mounting a disk     that contains specially crafted partition tables.
    (CVE-2011-1163, Low)

  - Missing validations of null-terminated string data     structure elements in the do_replace(),     compat_do_replace(), do_ipt_get_ctl(),     do_ip6t_get_ctl(), and do_arpt_get_ctl() functions could     allow a local user who has the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability     to cause an information leak. (CVE-2011-1170,     CVE-2011-1171, CVE-2011-1172, Low)

This update also fixes several hundred bugs and adds enhancements.

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

The remote Oracle Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the ELSA-2011-0542 advisory.

  - arch/x86/kvm/x86.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.36.2 does not initialize certain structure members,     which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel stack memory via read     operations on the /dev/kvm device. (CVE-2010-3881)

  - The socket implementation in net/core/sock.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.34 does not properly manage a     backlog of received packets, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory     consumption) by sending a large amount of network traffic, as demonstrated by netperf UDP tests.
    (CVE-2010-4251)

  - The socket implementation in net/core/sock.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.35 does not properly manage a     backlog of received packets, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service by sending a large     amount of network traffic, related to the sk_add_backlog function and the sk_rmem_alloc socket field.
    NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2010-4251. (CVE-2010-4805)

  - mm/huge_memory.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38-rc5 does not prevent creation of a transparent huge     page (THP) during the existence of a temporary stack for an exec system call, which allows local users to     cause a denial of service (memory consumption) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted     application. (CVE-2011-0999)

  - Buffer overflow in the mac_partition function in fs/partitions/mac.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.37.2     allows local users to cause a denial of service (panic) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a     malformed Mac OS partition table. (CVE-2011-1010)

  - The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) subsystem in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 does not properly handle     congestion map updates, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (BUG_ON and system crash)     via vectors involving (1) a loopback (aka loop) transmit operation or (2) an InfiniBand (aka ib) transmit     operation. (CVE-2011-1023)

  - fs/eventpoll.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 places epoll file descriptors within other epoll data     structures without properly checking for (1) closed loops or (2) deep chains, which allows local users to     cause a denial of service (deadlock or stack memory consumption) via a crafted application that makes     epoll_create and epoll_ctl system calls. (CVE-2011-1082)

  - The __nfs4_proc_set_acl function in fs/nfs/nfs4proc.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 stores NFSv4 ACL     data in memory that is allocated by kmalloc but not properly freed, which allows local users to cause a     denial of service (panic) via a crafted attempt to set an ACL. (CVE-2011-1090)

  - The osf_partition function in fs/partitions/osf.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 does not properly     handle an invalid number of partitions, which might allow local users to obtain potentially sensitive     information from kernel heap memory via vectors related to partition-table parsing. (CVE-2011-1163)

  - net/ipv4/netfilter/arp_tables.c in the IPv4 implementation in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39 does not     place the expected '\0' character at the end of string data in the values of certain structure members,     which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel memory by leveraging the     CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to issue a crafted request, and then reading the argument to the resulting     modprobe process. (CVE-2011-1170)

  - net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.c in the IPv4 implementation in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39 does not place     the expected '\0' character at the end of string data in the values of certain structure members, which     allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel memory by leveraging the     CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to issue a crafted request, and then reading the argument to the resulting     modprobe process. (CVE-2011-1171)

  - net/ipv6/netfilter/ip6_tables.c in the IPv6 implementation in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39 does not     place the expected '\0' character at the end of string data in the values of certain structure members,     which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel memory by leveraging the     CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to issue a crafted request, and then reading the argument to the resulting     modprobe process. (CVE-2011-1172)

  - Integer overflow in the _ctl_do_mpt_command function in drivers/scsi/mpt2sas/mpt2sas_ctl.c in the Linux     kernel 2.6.38 and earlier might allow local users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service (memory     corruption) via an ioctl call specifying a crafted value that triggers a heap-based buffer overflow.
    (CVE-2011-1494)

  - drivers/scsi/mpt2sas/mpt2sas_ctl.c in the Linux kernel 2.6.38 and earlier does not validate (1) length and     (2) offset values before performing memory copy operations, which might allow local users to gain     privileges, cause a denial of service (memory corruption), or obtain sensitive information from kernel     memory via a crafted ioctl call, related to the _ctl_do_mpt_command and _ctl_diag_read_buffer functions.
    (CVE-2011-1495)

  - The bond_select_queue function in drivers/net/bonding/bond_main.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39, when     a network device with a large number of receive queues is installed but the default tx_queues setting is     used, does not properly restrict queue indexes, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service     (BUG and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact by sending network traffic.
    (CVE-2011-1581)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Aristide Fattori and Roberto Paleari reported a flaw in the Linux kernel's handling of IPv4 icmp packets. A remote user could exploit this to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1927)

Goldwyn Rodrigues discovered that the OCFS2 filesystem did not correctly clear memory when writing certain file holes. A local attacker could exploit this to read uninitialized data from the disk, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-0463)

Timo Warns discovered that the LDM disk partition handling code did not correctly handle certain values. By inserting a specially crafted disk device, a local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1017)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly clear memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1078)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Bluetooth stack did not correctly check that device name strings were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1079)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that bridge network filtering did not check that name fields were NULL terminated. A local attacker could exploit this to leak contents of kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1080)

Johan Hovold discovered that the DCCP network stack did not correctly handle certain packet combinations. A remote attacker could send specially crafted network traffic that would crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1093)

Peter Huewe discovered that the TPM device did not correctly initialize memory. A local attacker could exploit this to read kernel heap memory contents, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1160)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the netfilter code did not check certain strings copied from userspace. A local attacker with netfilter access could exploit this to read kernel memory or crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1170, CVE-2011-1171, CVE-2011-1172, CVE-2011-2534)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the Acorn Universal Networking driver did not correctly initialize memory. A remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to read kernel stack memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1173)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the IRDA subsystem did not correctly check certain field sizes. If a system was using IRDA, a remote attacker could send specially crafted traffic to crash the system or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1180)

Dan Rosenberg reported errors in the OSS (Open Sound System) MIDI interface. A local attacker on non-x86 systems might be able to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1476)

Dan Rosenberg reported errors in the kernel's OSS (Open Sound System) driver for Yamaha FM synthesizer chips. A local user can exploit this to cause memory corruption, causing a denial of service or privilege escalation. (CVE-2011-1477)

It was discovered that the security fix for CVE-2010-4250 introduced a regression. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1479)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that MPT devices did not correctly validate certain values in ioctl calls. If these drivers were loaded, a local attacker could exploit this to read arbitrary kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495)

Tavis Ormandy discovered that the pidmap function did not correctly handle large requests. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1593)

Oliver Hartkopp and Dave Jones discovered that the CAN network driver did not correctly validate certain socket structures. If this driver was loaded, a local attacker could crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1598, CVE-2011-1748)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check certain ioctl values. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service, or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1745, CVE-2011-2022)

Vasiliy Kulikov discovered that the AGP driver did not check the size of certain memory allocations. A local attacker with access to the video subsystem could exploit this to run the system out of memory, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1746)

Dan Rosenberg reported an error in the old ABI compatibility layer of ARM kernels. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1759)

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the DCCP stack did not correctly handle certain packet structures. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1770)

Ben Greear discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle direct I/O. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-1771)

Timo Warns discovered that the EFI GUID partition table was not correctly parsed. A physically local attacker that could insert mountable devices could exploit this to crash the system or possibly gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-1776)

It was discovered that an mmap() call with the MAP_PRIVATE flag on '/dev/zero' was incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-2479)

Robert Swiecki discovered that mapping extensions were incorrectly handled. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2496)

The linux kernel did not properly account for PTE pages when deciding which task to kill in out of memory conditions. A local, unprivileged could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2498)

A flaw was found in the b43 driver in the Linux kernel. An attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service if the system has an active wireless interface using the b43 driver. (CVE-2011-3359)

Yogesh Sharma discovered that CIFS did not correctly handle UNCs that had no prefixpaths. A local attacker with access to a CIFS partition could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-3363)

Dan Rosenberg discovered flaws in the linux Rose (X.25 PLP) layer used by amateur radio. A local user or a remote user on an X.25 network could exploit these flaws to execute arbitrary code as root.
(CVE-2011-4913).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2011:0542 advisory.

  - kvm: arch/x86/kvm/x86.c: reading uninitialized stack memory (CVE-2010-3881)

  - kernel: unlimited socket backlog DoS (CVE-2010-4251, CVE-2010-4805)

  - kernel: thp: prevent hugepages during args/env copying into the user stack (CVE-2011-0999)

  - kernel: fs/partitions: Validate map_count in Mac partition tables (CVE-2011-1010)

  - kernel: BUG_ON() in rds_send_xmit() (CVE-2011-1023)

  - kernel: potential kernel deadlock when creating circular epoll file structures (CVE-2011-1082)

  - kernel: nfs4: Ensure that ACL pages sent over NFS were not allocated from the slab (CVE-2011-1090)

  - kernel: fs/partitions: Corrupted OSF partition table infoleak (CVE-2011-1163)

  - kernel: ipv4: netfilter: arp_tables: fix infoleak to userspace (CVE-2011-1170)

  - kernel: ipv4: netfilter: ip_tables: fix infoleak to userspace (CVE-2011-1171)

  - kernel: ipv6: netfilter: ip6_tables: fix infoleak to userspace (CVE-2011-1172)

  - kernel: drivers/scsi/mpt2sas: prevent heap overflows (CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495)

  - kernel: bonding: Incorrect TX queue offset (CVE-2011-1581)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and three bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 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.

This update includes backported fixes for security issues. These issues, except for CVE-2011-1182, only affected users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 Extended Update Support as they have already been addressed for users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in the 6.1 update, RHSA-2011:0542.

Security fixes :

* Buffer overflow flaws were found in the Linux kernel's Management Module Support for Message Passing Technology (MPT) based controllers.
A local, unprivileged user could use these flaws to cause a denial of service, an information leak, or escalate their privileges.
(CVE-2011-1494, CVE-2011-1495, Important)

* A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's networking subsystem. If the number of packets received exceeded the receiver's buffer limit, they were queued in a backlog, consuming memory, instead of being discarded. A remote attacker could abuse this flaw to cause a denial of service (out-of-memory condition). (CVE-2010-4251, CVE-2010-4805, Moderate)

* A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Transparent Huge Pages (THP) implementation. A local, unprivileged user could abuse this flaw to allow the user stack (when it is using huge pages) to grow and cause a denial of service. (CVE-2011-0999, Moderate)

* A flaw in the Linux kernel's Event Poll (epoll) implementation could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service.
(CVE-2011-1082, Moderate)

* An inconsistency was found in the interaction between the Linux kernel's method for allocating NFSv4 (Network File System version 4) ACL data and the method by which it was freed. This inconsistency led to a kernel panic which could be triggered by a local, unprivileged user with files owned by said user on an NFSv4 share. (CVE-2011-1090, Moderate)

* It was found that some structure padding and reserved fields in certain data structures in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) were not initialized properly before being copied to user-space. A privileged host user with access to '/dev/kvm' could use this flaw to leak kernel stack memory to user-space. (CVE-2010-3881, Low)

* A missing validation check was found in the Linux kernel's mac_partition() implementation, used for supporting file systems created on Mac OS operating systems. A local attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by mounting a disk that contains specially crafted partitions. (CVE-2011-1010, Low)

* A buffer overflow flaw in the DEC Alpha OSF partition implementation in the Linux kernel could allow a local attacker to cause an information leak by mounting a disk that contains specially crafted partition tables. (CVE-2011-1163, Low)

* Missing validations of null-terminated string data structure elements in the do_replace(), compat_do_replace(), do_ipt_get_ctl(), do_ip6t_get_ctl(), and do_arpt_get_ctl() functions could allow a local user who has the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to cause an information leak. (CVE-2011-1170, CVE-2011-1171, CVE-2011-1172, Low)

* A missing validation check was found in the Linux kernel's signals implementation. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to send signals via the sigqueueinfo system call, with the si_code set to SI_TKILL and with spoofed process and user IDs, to other processes.
Note: This flaw does not allow existing permission checks to be bypassed; signals can only be sent if your privileges allow you to already do so. (CVE-2011-1182, Low)

Red Hat would like to thank Dan Rosenberg for reporting CVE-2011-1494 and CVE-2011-1495; Nelson Elhage for reporting CVE-2011-1082; Vasiliy Kulikov for reporting CVE-2010-3881, CVE-2011-1170, CVE-2011-1171, and CVE-2011-1172; Timo Warns for reporting CVE-2011-1010 and CVE-2011-1163; and Julien Tinnes of the Google Security Team for reporting CVE-2011-1182.

This update also fixes three bugs. Documentation for these changes will be available shortly from the Technical Notes document linked to in the References section.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Published	Updated	Severity
61041	Scientific Linux Security Update : kernel on SL6.x i386/x86_64	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	8/1/2012	1/14/2021	medium
181049	Oracle Linux 6 : Oracle / Linux / 6.1 / kernel (ELSA-2011-0542)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	9/7/2023	9/7/2023	high
55591	Ubuntu 11.04 : linux vulnerabilities (USN-1167-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	7/14/2011	2/26/2020	medium
54590	RHEL 6 : Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 kernel (RHSA-2011:0542)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	5/20/2011	4/21/2024	high
63986	RHEL 6 : kernel (RHSA-2011:0883)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	1/24/2013	1/14/2021	high

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