Scientific Linux: SLSA-2014:1143-1 Moderate: Kernel Security Update

Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 14:48:44 +0000
Reply-To: scientific-linux-users@
Sender: Security Errata for Scientific Linux
 
From: Pat Riehecky 
Subject: Security ERRATA Moderate: kernel on SL5.x i386/x86_64
MIME-Version: 1.0

Synopsis: Moderate: kernel security and bug fix update
Advisory ID: SLSA-2014:1143-1
Issue Date: 2014-09-03
CVE Numbers: CVE-2014-3917
--

* An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the Linux kernel's
system call auditing implementation. On a system with existing audit rules
defined, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to leak kernel
memory to user space or, potentially, crash the system. (CVE-2014-3917,
Moderate)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* A bug in the journaling code (jbd and jbd2) could, under very heavy
workload of fsync() operations, trigger a BUG_ON and result in a kernel
oops. Also, fdatasync() could fail to immediately write out changes in the
file size only. These problems have been resolved by backporting a series
of patches that fixed these problems in the respective code on Scientific
Linux 6. This update also improves performance of ext3 and ext4 file
systems.

* Due to a bug in the ext4 code, the fdatasync() system call did not force
the inode size change to be written to the disk if it was the only
metadata change in the file. This could result in the wrong inode size and
possible data loss if the system terminated unexpectedly. The code
handling inode updates has been fixed and fdatasync() now writes data to
the disk as expected in this situation.

* A workaround to a DMA read problem in the tg3 driver was incorrectly
applied to the whole Broadcom 5719 and 5720 chipset family. This
workaround is valid only to the A0 revision of the 5719 chips and for
other revisions and chips causes occasional Tx timeouts. This update
correctly applies the aforementioned workaround only to the A0 revision of
the 5719 chips.

* Due to a bug in the page writeback code, the system could become
unresponsive when being under memory pressure and heavy NFS load. This
update fixes the code responsible for handling of dirty pages, and dirty
page write outs no longer flood the work queue.

The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
--

SL5
 x86_64
 kernel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-debug-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-debuginfo-common-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-headers-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-xen-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-xen-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
 i386
 kernel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-PAE-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-PAE-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-PAE-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-debug-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-debuginfo-common-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-headers-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i386.rpm
 kernel-xen-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-xen-debuginfo-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.i686.rpm
 noarch
 kernel-doc-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5.noarch.rpm

- Scientific Linux Development Team