Moderate: postgresql security update

Synopsis

Moderate: postgresql security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Moderate

Topic

An update for postgresql is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Moderate. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

Description

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system (DBMS).

Security Fix(es):

  • Privilege escalation flaws were found in the initialization scripts of PostgreSQL. An attacker with access to the postgres user account could use these flaws to obtain root access on the server machine. (CVE-2017-12172, CVE-2017-15097)

Note: This patch drops the script privileges from root to the postgres user. Therefore, this update works properly only if the postgres user has write access to the postgres' home directory, such as the one in the default configuration (/var/lib/pgsql).

Red Hat would like to thank the PostgreSQL project for reporting CVE-2017-12172. The CVE-2017-15097 issue was discovered by Pedro Barbosa (Red Hat) and the PostgreSQL project. Upstream acknowledges Antoine Scemama (Brainloop) as the original reporter of these issues.

Solution

For details on how to apply this update, which includes the changes described in this advisory, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

If the postgresql service is running, it will be automatically restarted after installing this update.

Affected Products

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 7.6 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 7.5 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support 7.4 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.6 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.4 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 7 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 7 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 7 s390x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.6 s390x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.5 s390x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.4 s390x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 7 ppc64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.6 ppc64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.5 ppc64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.4 ppc64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 7 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.6 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.5 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.4 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, little endian 7 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, little endian - Extended Update Support 7.6 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, little endian - Extended Update Support 7.5 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, little endian - Extended Update Support 7.4 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.6 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.4 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM 64 7 aarch64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power 9 7 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (for IBM Power LE) - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.6 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (for IBM Power LE) - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.4 ppc64le
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.6 x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.4 x86_64

Fixes

  • BZ - 1498394 - CVE-2017-12172 postgresql: Start scripts permit database administrator to modify root-owned files
  • BZ - 1508985 - CVE-2017-15097 postgresql: Start scripts permit database administrator to modify root-owned files

CVEs

References