Red Hat: RHSA-2012:1037 Moderate: PostgreSQL Denial Of Service Issue

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system (DBMS).
A flaw was found in the way the crypt() password hashing function from the optional PostgreSQL pgcrypto contrib module performed password transformation when used with the DES algorithm. If the password string to be hashed contained the 0x80 byte value, the remainder of the string was ignored when calculating the hash, significantly reducing the password strength. This made brute-force guessing more efficient as the whole password was not required to gain access to protected resources. (CVE-2012-2143)
Note: With this update, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash; therefore, any previously stored password values that are affected by this issue will no longer match. In such cases, it will be necessary for those stored password hashes to be updated.
A denial of service flaw was found in the way the PostgreSQL server performed a user privileges check when applying SECURITY DEFINER or SET attributes to a procedural language's (such as PL/Perl or PL/Python) call handler function. A non-superuser database owner could use this flaw to cause the PostgreSQL server to crash due to infinite recursion. (CVE-2012-2655)
Upstream acknowledges Rubin Xu and Joseph Bonneau as the original reportersof the CVE-2012-2143 issue.
These updated packages upgrade PostgreSQL to version 8.4.12, which fixes these issues as well as several non-security issues. Refer to the PostgreSQL Release Notes for a full list of changes:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/release.html
All PostgreSQL users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct these issues. If the postgresql service is running, it will be automatically restarted after installing this update.