Moderate: glibc security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Moderate: glibc security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Moderate

Topic

Updated glibc packages that fix one security issue and one bug are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate
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.

Description

The glibc packages provide the standard C libraries (libc), POSIX thread
libraries (libpthread), standard math libraries (libm), and the Name Server
Caching Daemon (nscd) used by multiple programs on the system. Without
these libraries, the Linux system cannot function correctly.

Multiple integer overflow flaws, leading to heap-based buffer overflows,
were found in glibc's memory allocator functions (pvalloc, valloc, and
memalign). If an application used such a function, it could cause the
application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of the user running the application. (CVE-2013-4332)

This update also fixes the following bug:

• Prior to this update, the size of the L3 cache in certain CPUs for SMP
  (Symmetric Multiprocessing) servers was not correctly detected. The
  incorrect cache size detection resulted in less than optimal performance
  for routines that used this information, including the memset() function.
  To fix this bug, the cache size detection has been corrected and core
  routines including memset() have their performance restored to expected
  levels. (BZ#1011424)
  

All glibc users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain backported patches to correct these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the
Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 1007545 - CVE-2013-4332 glibc: three integer overflows in memory allocator

CVEs

• CVE-2013-4332

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate