Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 RHSA-2013:0130-01 Low: httpd Security Fix

The httpd packages contain the Apache HTTP Server (httpd), which is the namesake project of The Apache Software Foundation.
Input sanitization flaws were found in the mod_negotiation module. A remote attacker able to upload or create files with arbitrary names in a directory that has the MultiViews options enabled, could use these flaws to conduct cross-site scripting and HTTP response splitting attacks against usersvisiting the site. (CVE-2008-0455, CVE-2008-0456, CVE-2012-2687)
Bug fixes:
* Previously, no check was made to see if the /etc/pki/tls/private/localhost.key file was a valid key prior to running the "%post" script for the "mod_ssl" package. Consequently, when /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt did not exist and "localhost.key" was present but invalid, upgrading the Apache HTTP Server daemon (httpd) with mod_ssl failed. The "%post" script has been fixed to test for an existing SSL key. As a result, upgrading httpd with mod_ssl now proceeds as expected. (BZ#752618)
* The "mod_ssl" module did not support operation under FIPS mode. Consequently, when operating Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with FIPS mode enabled, httpd failed to start. An upstream patch has been applied to disable non-FIPS functionality if operating under FIPS mode and httpd now starts as expected. (BZ#773473)
* Prior to this update, httpd exit status codes were not Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant. When the command "service httpd reload" was run and httpd failed, the exit status code returned was "0" and not in the range 1 to 6 as expected. A patch has been applied to the init script and httpd now returns "1" as an exit status code. (BZ#783242)
* Chunked Transfer Coding is described in RFC 2616. Previously, the Apache server did not correctly handle a chunked encoded POST request with a "chunk-size" or "chunk-extension" value of 32 bytes or more. Consequently, when such a POST request was made the server did not respond. An upstream patch has been applied and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#840845)
* Due to a regression, when mod_cache received a non-cacheable 304 response, the headers were served incorrectly. Consequently, compressed data could be returned to the client without the cached headers to indicate the data was compressed. An upstream patch has been applied to merge response and cached headers before data from the cache is served to the client. As a result, cached data is now correctly interpreted by the client. (BZ#845532)
* In a proxy configuration, certain response-line strings were not handled correctly. If a response-line without a "description" string was received from the origin server, for a non-standard status code, such as the "450" status code, a "500 Internal Server Error" would be returned to the client. This bug has been fixed so that the original response line is returned to the client. (BZ#853128)
Enhancements:
* The configuration directive "LDAPReferrals" is now supported in addition to the previously introduced "LDAPChaseReferrals". (BZ#727342)
* The AJP support module for "mod_proxy", "mod_proxy_ajp", now supports the "ProxyErrorOverride" directive. Consequently, it is now possible to configure customized error pages for web applications running on a backend server accessed via AJP. (BZ#767890)
* The "%posttrans" scriptlet which automatically restarts the httpd service after a package upgrade can now be disabled. If the file /etc/sysconfig/httpd-disable-posttrans exists, the scriptlet will not restart the daemon. (BZ#833042)
* The output of "httpd -S" now includes configured alias names for each virtual host. (BZ#833043)
* New certificate variable names are now exposed by "mod_ssl" using the "_DN_userID" suffix, such as "SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_userID", which use the commonly used object identifier (OID) definition of "userID", OID 0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1. (BZ#840036)
All users of httpd are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these issues and add these enhancements.