Synopsis
Important: kernel security and bug fix update
Type/Severity
Security Advisory: Important
Topic
Updated kernel packages that fix two security issues and two bugs are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Advanced Update Support.
Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Important security
impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give
detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the
CVE links in the References section.
Description
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.
- It was found that the x86 ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) is prone to
a denial of service attack inside a virtualized environment in the form of
an infinite loop in the microcode due to the way (sequential) delivering of
benign exceptions such as #AC (alignment check exception) and #DB (debug
exception) is handled. A privileged user inside a guest could use these
flaws to create denial of service conditions on the host kernel.
(CVE-2015-5307, CVE-2015-8104, Important)
Red Hat would like to thank Ben Serebrin of Google Inc. for reporting the
CVE-2015-5307 issue.
This update also fixes the following bugs:
- With an IPv6 address on a bond and a slave failover, Unsolicited Neighbor
Advertisement (UNA) was previously sent using the link global IPv6 address
as source address. The underlying source code has been patched, and, after
the failover in bonding, UNA is sent using both the corresponding link IPv6
address and global IPv6 address of bond0 and bond0.vlan. (BZ#1258479)
- Previously, Human Interface Device (HID) would run a report on an
unaligned buffer, which could cause a page fault interrupt and an oops when
the end of the report was read. This update fixes this bug by padding the
end of the report with extra bytes, so the reading of the report never
crosses a page boundary. As a result, a page fault and subsequent oops no
longer occur. (BZ#1268201)
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be
rebooted for this update to take effect.
Solution
Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.
For details on how to apply this update, refer to:
https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258
Affected Products
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 6.5 x86_64
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 6.5 x86_64
Fixes
- BZ - 1277172 - CVE-2015-5307 virt: guest to host DoS by triggering an infinite loop in microcode via #AC exception
- BZ - 1278496 - CVE-2015-8104 virt: guest to host DoS by triggering an infinite loop in microcode via #DB exception
CVEs
References
Vulmon