An information disclosure flaw was found in the way dracut, an initramfs root filesystem images generator, created initramfs images. When the root filesystem contained sensitive information (password based authentication for iSCSI systems or encrypted root filesystem crypttab password information), an attacker could use this flaw to obtain this information.

Acknowledgements:

This issue was discovered by Peter Jones of the Red Hat Installer Team.

The ExecShield feature in a certain Red Hat patch for the Linux kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 and Fedora 15 and 16 does not properly handle use of many shared libraries by a 32-bit executable file, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to bypass the ASLR protection mechanism by leveraging a predictable base address for one of these libraries.