Moderate: openssl security update
Security Advisory: Moderate
Updated openssl packages that fix two security issues 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.
OpenSSL is a toolkit that implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3)
and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols, as well as a
full-strength, general purpose cryptography library.
It was found that the OpenSSL library did not properly re-initialize its
internal state in the SSL_library_init() function after previous calls to
the CRYPTO_cleanup_all_ex_data() function, which would cause a memory leak
for each subsequent SSL connection. This flaw could cause server
applications that call those functions during reload, such as a combination
of the Apache HTTP Server, mod_ssl, PHP, and cURL, to consume all available
memory, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2009-4355)
Dan Kaminsky found that browsers could accept certificates with MD2 hash
signatures, even though MD2 is no longer considered a cryptographically
strong algorithm. This could make it easier for an attacker to create a
malicious certificate that would be treated as trusted by a browser.
OpenSSL now disables the use of the MD2 algorithm inside signatures by
default. (CVE-2009-2409)
All OpenSSL users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain
backported patches to resolve these issues. For the update to take effect,
all services linked to the OpenSSL library must be restarted, or the system
rebooted.
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
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