Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 RHSA-2010:0148 Critical Kernel DoS Update

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
This update fixes the following security issues:
* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the sctp_rcv_ootb() function in the Linux kernel Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. A remote attacker could send a specially-crafted SCTP packet to a target system, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2010-0008, Important)
* a NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the ip6_dst_lookup_tail() function in the Linux kernel. An attacker on the local network could trigger this flaw by sending IPv6 traffic to a target system, leading to a system crash (kernel OOPS) if dst->neighbour is NULL on the target system when receiving an IPv6 packet. (CVE-2010-0437, Important)
This update also fixes the following bugs:
* programs compiled on x86, and that also call sched_rr_get_interval(), were silently corrupted when run on 64-bit systems. With this update, when such programs attempt to call sched_rr_get_interval() on 64-bit systems, sys32_sched_rr_get_interval() is called instead, which resolves this issue. (BZ#557682)
* the fix for CVE-2009-4538 provided by RHSA-2010:0079 introduced a regression, preventing Wake on LAN (WoL) working for network devices using the Intel PRO/1000 Linux driver, e1000e. Attempting to configure WoL for such devices resulted in the following error, even when configuring valid options:
"Cannot set new wake-on-lan settings: Operation not supported not setting wol"
This update resolves this regression, and WoL now works as expected for network devices using the e1000e driver. (BZ#559333)
* a number of bugs have been fixed in the copy_user routines for Intel 64 and AMD64 systems, one of which could have possibly led to data corruption. (BZ#568305)
* on some systems, a race condition in the inode-based file event notifications implementation caused soft lockups and the following messages:
"BUG: warning at fs/inotify.c:181/set_dentry_child_flags()" "BUG: soft lockup - CPU#[x] stuck for 10s!"
This update resolves this race condition, and also removes the inotify debugging code from the kernel, due to race conditions in that code. (BZ#568662)
* if a program that calls posix_fadvise() were compiled on x86, and then run on a 64-bit system, that program could experience various problems, including performance issues and the call to posix_fadvise() failing, causing the program to not run as expected or even abort. With this update, when such programs attempt to call posix_fadvise() on 64-bit systems, sys32_fadvise64() is called instead, which resolves this issue. This update also fixes other 32-bit system calls that were mistakenly called on 64-bit systems (including systems running the kernel-xen kernel). (BZ#569595)
Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.