RHSA-2014:0900: Important: kernel security and bug fix update

First published: Thu Jul 17 2014(Updated: )

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux<br>operating system.<br><li> A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled</li> the requeuing of certain Priority Inheritance (PI) futexes. A local,<br>unprivileged user could use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the<br>system. (CVE-2014-3153, Important)<br><li> A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's floppy driver handled user</li> space provided data in certain error code paths while processing FDRAWCMD<br>IOCTL commands. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this<br>flaw to free (using the kfree() function) arbitrary kernel memory.<br>(CVE-2014-1737, Important)<br><li> It was found that the Linux kernel's floppy driver leaked internal kernel</li> memory addresses to user space during the processing of the FDRAWCMD IOCTL<br>command. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to<br>obtain information about the kernel heap arrangement. (CVE-2014-1738, Low)<br>Note: A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use these two flaws<br>(CVE-2014-1737 in combination with CVE-2014-1738) to escalate their<br>privileges on the system.<br>Red Hat would like to thank Kees Cook of Google for reporting<br>CVE-2014-3153, and Matthew Daley for reporting CVE-2014-1737 and<br>CVE-2014-1738. Google acknowledges Pinkie Pie as the original reporter of<br>CVE-2014-3153.<br>This update also fixes the following bug:<br><li> A previous change that introduced global clock updates caused guest</li> machines to boot slowly when the host Time Stamp Counter (TSC) was marked<br>as unstable. The slow down increased with the number of vCPUs allocated.<br>To resolve this problem, a patch has been applied to limit the rate of the<br>global clock updates. (BZ#1102253)<br>All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which<br>contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be<br>rebooted for this update to take effect.<br>

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