Red Hat 6.2 RHSA-2014:0800-01 Important Kernel Escalation Threat

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled the requeuing of certain Priority Inheritance (PI) futexes. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the system. (CVE-2014-3153, Important)
* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's floppy driver handled user space provided data in certain error code paths while processing FDRAWCMD IOCTL commands. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to free (using the kfree() function) arbitrary kernel memory. (CVE-2014-1737, Important)
* It was found that the Linux kernel's floppy driver leaked internal kernel memory addresses to user space during the processing of the FDRAWCMD IOCTL command. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to obtain information about the kernel heap arrangement. (CVE-2014-1738, Low)
Note: A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use these two flaws (CVE-2014-1737 in combination with CVE-2014-1738) to escalate their privileges on the system.
Red Hat would like to thank Kees Cook of Google for reporting CVE-2014-3153, and Matthew Daley for reporting CVE-2014-1737 and CVE-2014-1738. Google acknowledges Pinkie Pie as the original reporter of CVE-2014-3153.
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.