Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

====================================================================                   Red Hat Security Advisory

Synopsis:          Important: kernel security and bug fix update
Advisory ID:       RHSA-2009:1106-01
Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Advisory URL:      https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009:1106.html
Issue date:        2009-06-16
CVE Names:         CVE-2009-1072 CVE-2009-1192 CVE-2009-1439 
                   CVE-2009-1630 CVE-2009-1633 CVE-2009-1758 
====================================================================
1. Summary:

Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and several bugs
are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - i386, noarch, x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - i386, ia64, noarch, ppc, s390x, x86_64

3. Description:

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.

Security fixes:

* several flaws were found in the way the Linux kernel CIFS implementation
handles Unicode strings. CIFS clients convert Unicode strings sent by a
server to their local character sets, and then write those strings into
memory. If a malicious server sent a long enough string, it could write
past the end of the target memory region and corrupt other memory areas,
possibly leading to a denial of service or privilege escalation on the
client mounting the CIFS share. (CVE-2009-1439, CVE-2009-1633, Important)

* the Linux kernel Network File System daemon (nfsd) implementation did not
drop the CAP_MKNOD capability when handling requests from local,
unprivileged users. This flaw could possibly lead to an information leak or
privilege escalation. (CVE-2009-1072, Moderate)

* Frank Filz reported the NFSv4 client was missing a file permission check
for the execute bit in some situations. This could allow local,
unprivileged users to run non-executable files on NFSv4 mounted file
systems. (CVE-2009-1630, Moderate)

* a missing check was found in the hypervisor_callback() function in the
Linux kernel provided by the kernel-xen package. This could cause a denial
of service of a 32-bit guest if an application running in that guest
accesses a certain memory location in the kernel. (CVE-2009-1758, Moderate)

* a flaw was found in the AGPGART driver. The agp_generic_alloc_page() and
agp_generic_alloc_pages() functions did not zero out the memory pages they
allocate, which may later be available to user-space processes. This flaw
could possibly lead to an information leak. (CVE-2009-1192, Low)

Bug fixes:

* a race in the NFS client between destroying cached access rights and
unmounting an NFS file system could have caused a system crash. "Busy
inodes" messages may have been logged. (BZ#498653)

* nanosleep() could sleep several milliseconds less than the specified time
on Intel Itanium