Moderate: xen security update

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2012-2625   CVE-2012-2625  

Synopsis

Moderate: xen security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Moderate

Topic

Updated xen packages that fix one security issue 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 xen packages contain administration tools and the xend service for
managing the kernel-xen kernel for virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux.

A flaw was found in the way the pyGrub boot loader handled compressed
kernel images. A privileged guest user in a para-virtualized guest (a DomU)
could use this flaw to create a crafted kernel image that, when attempting
to boot it, could result in an out-of-memory condition in the privileged
domain (the Dom0). (CVE-2012-2625)

Red Hat would like to thank Xinli Niu for reporting this issue.

All users of xen are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain a backported patch to correct this issue. After installing the
updated packages, the xend service must be restarted for this update to
take effect.

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/knowledge/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 Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

  • BZ - 821676 - CVE-2012-2625 xen: pv bootloader doesn't check the size of the bzip2 or lzma compressed kernel

CVEs

References