Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: RHSA-2009-1335 Moderate OpenSSL Security Update

OpenSSL is a toolkit that implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols, as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. Datagram TLS (DTLS) is a protocol based on TLS that is capable of securing datagram transport (for example, UDP).
Multiple denial of service flaws were discovered in OpenSSL's DTLS implementation. A remote attacker could use these flaws to cause a DTLS server to use excessive amounts of memory, or crash on an invalid memory access or NULL pointer dereference. (CVE-2009-1377, CVE-2009-1378, CVE-2009-1379, CVE-2009-1386, CVE-2009-1387)
Note: These flaws only affect applications that use DTLS. Red Hat does not ship any DTLS client or server applications in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
An input validation flaw was found in the handling of the BMPString and UniversalString ASN1 string types in OpenSSL's ASN1_STRING_print_ex() function. An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially-crafted X.509 certificate that could cause applications using the affected function to crash when printing certificate contents. (CVE-2009-0590)
Note: The affected function is rarely used. No application shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux calls this function, for example.
These updated packages also fix the following bugs:
* "openssl smime -verify -in" verifies the signature of the input file and the "-verify" switch expects a signed or encrypted input file. Previously, running openssl on an S/MIME file that was not encrypted or signed caused openssl to segfault. With this update, the input file is now checked for a signature or encryption. Consequently, openssl now returns an error and quits when attempting to verify an unencrypted or unsigned S/MIME file. (BZ#472440)
* when generating RSA keys, pairwise tests were called even in non-FIPS mode. This prevented small keys from being generated. With this update, generating keys in non-FIPS mode no longer calls the pairwise tests and keys as small as 32-bits can be generated in this mode. Note: In FIPS mode, pairwise tests are still called and keys generated in this mode must still be 1024-bits or larger. (BZ#479817)
As well, these updated packages add the following enhancements:
* both the libcrypto and libssl shared libraries, which are part of the OpenSSL FIPS module, are now checked for integrity on initialization of FIPS mode. (BZ#475798)
* an issuing Certificate Authority (CA) allows multiple certificate templates to inherit the CA's Common Name (CN). Because this CN is used as a unique identifier, each template had to have its own Certificate Revocation List (CRL). With this update, multiple CRLs with the same subject name can now be stored in a X509_STORE structure, with their signature field being used to distinguish between them. (BZ#457134)
* the fipscheck library is no longer needed for rebuilding the openssl source RPM. (BZ#475798)
OpenSSL users should upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues and add these enhancements.