RHEL 5 : kernel (RHSA-2008:1017)

high Nessus Plugin ID 35179
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The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.


Updated kernel packages that resolve several security issues and fix various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

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

* Olaf Kirch reported a flaw in the i915 kernel driver. This flaw could, potentially, lead to local privilege escalation. Note: the flaw only affects systems based on the Intel G33 Express Chipset and newer.
(CVE-2008-3831, Important)

* Miklos Szeredi reported a missing check for files opened with O_APPEND in the sys_splice(). This could allow a local, unprivileged user to bypass the append-only file restrictions. (CVE-2008-4554, Important)

* a deficiency was found in the Linux kernel Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. This could lead to a possible denial of service if one end of a SCTP connection did not support the AUTH extension. (CVE-2008-4576, Important)

In addition, these updated packages fix the following bugs :

* on Itanium(r) systems, when a multithreaded program was traced using the command 'strace -f', messages such as

PANIC: attached pid 10740 exited PANIC: handle_group_exit: 10740 leader 10721 ...

will be displayed, and after which the trace would stop. With these updated packages, 'strace -f' command no longer results in these error messages, and strace terminates normally after tracing all threads.

* on big-endian systems such as PowerPC, the getsockopt() function incorrectly returned 0 depending on the parameters passed to it when the time to live (TTL) value equaled 255.

* when using an NFSv4 file system, accessing the same file with two separate processes simultaneously resulted in the NFS client process becoming unresponsive.

* on AMD64 and Intel(r) 64 hypervisor-enabled systems, when a syscall correctly returned '-1' in code compiled on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the same code, when run with the strace utility, would incorrectly return an invalid return value. This has been fixed: on AMD64 and Intel(r) 64 hypervisor-enabled systems, syscalls in compiled code return the same, correct values as syscalls run with strace.

* on the Itanium(r) architecture, fully-virtualized guest domains created using more than 64 GB of memory caused other guest domains not to receive interrupts. This caused soft lockups on other guests. All guest domains are now able to receive interrupts regardless of their allotted memory.

* when user-space used SIGIO notification, which was not disabled before closing a file descriptor and was then re-enabled in a different process, an attempt by the kernel to dereference a stale pointer led to a kernel crash. With this fix, such a situation no longer causes a kernel crash.

* modifications to certain pages made through a memory-mapped region could have been lost in cases when the NFS client needed to invalidate the page cache for that particular memory-mapped file.

* fully-virtualized Windows(r) guests became unresponsive due to the vIOSAPIC component being multiprocessor-unsafe. With this fix, vIOSAPIC is multiprocessor-safe and Windows guests do not become unresponsive.

* on certain systems, keyboard controllers could not withstand continuous requests to switch keyboard LEDs on or off. This resulted in some or all key presses not being registered by the system.

* on the Itanium(r) architecture, setting the 'vm.nr_hugepages' sysctl parameter caused a kernel stack overflow resulting in a kernel panic, and possibly stack corruption. With this fix, setting vm.nr_hugepages works correctly.

* hugepages allow the Linux kernel to utilize the multiple page size capabilities of modern hardware architectures. In certain configurations, systems with large amounts of memory could fail to allocate most of this memory for hugepages even if it was free. This could result, for example, in database restart failures.

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.


Update the affected packages.

See Also





Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 35179

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2008-1017.nasl

Version: 1.31

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 12/16/2008

Updated: 1/14/2021

Dependencies: ssh_get_info.nasl, linux_alt_patch_detect.nasl

Risk Information


Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.2


Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

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

Temporal Vector: E:U/RL:OF/RC: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-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, 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-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-xen-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5.2

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/16/2008

Vulnerability Publication Date: 10/15/2008

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2008-3831, CVE-2008-4554, CVE-2008-4576

BID: 31634, 31792, 31903

RHSA: 2008:1017

CWE: 264, 287, 399