The Linux kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system.
These new kernel packages contain fixes for the security issues described below:
* a flaw in the get_fdb_entries function of the network bridging support that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (crash) or allow a potential privilege escalation (CVE-2006-5751, Important)
* an information leak in the _block_prepare_write function that allowed a local user to read kernel memory (CVE-2006-4813, Important)
* an information leak in the copy_from_user() implementation on s390 and s390x platforms that allowed a local user to read kernel memory (CVE-2006-5174, Important)
* a flaw in the handling of /proc/net/ip6_flowlabel that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) (CVE-2006-5619, Important)
* a flaw in the AIO handling that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (panic) (CVE-2006-5754, Important)
* a race condition in the mincore system core that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (system hang) (CVE-2006-4814, Moderate)
* a flaw in the ELF handling on ia64 and sparc architectures which triggered a cross-region memory mapping and allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (CVE-2006-4538, Moderate)
* a flaw in the dev_queue_xmit function of the network subsystem that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (data corruption) (CVE-2006-6535, Moderate)
* a flaw in the handling of CAPI messages over Bluetooth that allowed a remote system to cause a denial of service or potential code execution. This flaw is only exploitable if a privileged user establishes a connection to a malicious remote device (CVE-2006-6106, Moderate)
* a flaw in the listxattr system call that allowed a local user to cause a denial of service (data corruption) or potential privilege escalation. To successfully exploit this flaw the existence of a bad inode is required first (CVE-2006-5753, Moderate)
* a flaw in the __find_get_block_slow function that allowed a local privileged user to cause a denial of service (CVE-2006-5757, Low)
* various flaws in the supported filesystems that allowed a local privileged user to cause a denial of service (CVE-2006-5823, CVE-2006-6053, CVE-2006-6054, CVE-2006-6056, Low)
In addition to the security issues described above, fixes for the following bugs were included:
* initialization error of the tg3 driver with some BCM5703x network card
* a memory leak in the audit subsystem
* x86_64 nmi watchdog timeout is too short
* ext2/3 directory reads fail intermittently
Red Hat would like to thank Dmitriy Monakhov and Kostantin Khorenko for reporting issues fixed in this erratum.
All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade their kernels to the packages associated with their machine architecture and configurations as listed in this erratum.
Create Date: 2007-01-30 Last Update Date: 2008-03-20