Security update for Linux kernel

Knowledgebase

(Last modified: 23AUG2005)

solutions Security update for Linux kernel SuSE Linux Maintenance Web (e10ca3709a9019caf2c4ceda142f2980)

Applies to

Package: kernel-default
kernel-smp
kernel-source
kernel-syms
Product(s): SUSE CORE 9 for AMD64 and Intel EM64T
Novell Linux Desktop 9 for x86_64
Patch: patch-10459
Release: 20050823
Obsoletes: b3d76bae3ffcf76948bbfbfd5dbe2685

Indications

Everyone using the Linux Kernel on x86_64 architecture should update.

Contraindications

None.

Problem description

This update fixes the following security issues:

CAN-2005-2457: A problem in decompression of files on "zisofs" filesystem was fixed.
CAN-2005-2458: A potential buffer overflow in the zlib decompression handling in the kernel was fixed.
CAN-2005-2459: Some return codes in zlib decoding were fixed which could have led to an attacker crashing the kernel.
CAN-2005-2555: Only CAP_NET_ADMIN is now allowed load socket policies.
CAN-2005-0916: Fixed a possible crash in the AIO hugepage handling of PowerPC64.
CAN-2005-2456: Fixed a potential overflow caused by missing boundary checks of sock->sk_policy in net/xfrm/.
x86_64: A previous fix for a denial of service attack with compat 32bit mode programs was too strict and could crash the kernel. (The earlier fix had the Mitre ID CAN-2005-1765.)
s390: Fixed /sys/ permissions where a user could change machine states, including powering down or up partitions.

This update also fixes the following non security bugs:

The reported process start times sometimes were incorrect.
The OCFS2 filesystem was updated to version 1.0.2.
A potential deadlock in cpuset handling was fixed.
Fixed a potential crash on startup of the tg3 network driver.
Avoid high IRQ latencies in the VM handling.
rpm/post.sh was fixed so that initrd.previous is preserved again.
A problem in the handling of the tape ioctl MTIOCPOS was fixed.
Make the OOM process killer send SIGTERM first instead of SIGKILL.
Fixed a netfilter connection track return code mismatch.
Fixed a typo in the ipt_TTL netfilter module.
XEN was updated to version 2.0.6b.
Allow rsize/wsize values less than 4096 for NFS mounts.
A data corruption problem within the reiserfs filesystem in the handling of writing to mmaped regions after close of the filedescriptor was fixed.

Following arch specific bug were fixed:

x86_64: Set up BSP APIC ID correctly.

Solution

Please install the updates provided at the location noted below.

Installation notes

This update is provided as an RPM package that can easily be installed onto a running system by using this command:


rpm -Fvh kernel-*.rpm

In case you are using LILO as bootmanager, please make sure that you also execute the command


lilo

after installing the update for the system to remain bootable.
Finally, reboot the system with



shutdown -r now

links to download packages

Download Source Packages

Download the source code of the patches for maintained products.

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