Moderate: avahi security update
Security Advisory: Moderate
Updated avahi packages that fix a security issue are now available for Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.
Avahi is an implementation of the DNS Service Discovery and Multicast DNS
specifications for Zeroconf Networking. It facilitates service discovery on
a local network. Avahi and Avahi-aware applications allow you to plug your
computer into a network and, with no configuration, view other people to
chat with, see printers to print to, and find shared files on other computers.
Hugo Dias discovered a denial of service flaw in avahi-daemon. A remote
attacker on the same local area network (LAN) could send a
specially-crafted mDNS (Multicast DNS) packet that would cause avahi-daemon
to exit unexpectedly due to a failed assertion check. (CVE-2008-5081)
All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a
backported patch which resolves this issue. After installing the update,
avahi-daemon will be restarted automatically.
Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.
This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259