(RHSA-2008:0055) Important: kernel security and bug fix update

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.

These updated kernel packages fix the following security issues:

A flaw was found in the virtual filesystem (VFS). A local unprivileged
user could truncate directories to which they had write permission; this
could render the contents of the directory inaccessible. (CVE-2008-0001,
Important)

A flaw was found in the implementation of ptrace. A local unprivileged user
could trigger this flaw and possibly cause a denial of service (system
hang). (CVE-2007-5500, Important)

A flaw was found in the way the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel handled
page faults when a CPU used the NUMA method for accessing memory on Itanium
architectures. A local unprivileged user could trigger this flaw and cause
a denial of service (system panic). (CVE-2007-4130, Important)

A possible NULL pointer dereference was found in the chrp_show_cpuinfo
function when using the PowerPC architecture. This may have allowed a local
unprivileged user to cause a denial of service (crash).
(CVE-2007-6694, Moderate)

A flaw was found in the way core dump files were created. If a local user
can get a root-owned process to dump a core file into a directory, which
the user has write access to, they could gain read access to that core
file. This could potentially grant unauthorized access to sensitive
information. (CVE-2007-6206, Moderate)

Two buffer overflow flaws were found in the Linux kernel ISDN subsystem. A
local unprivileged user could use these flaws to cause a denial of
service. (CVE-2007-6063, CVE-2007-6151, Moderate)

As well, these updated packages fix the following bug:

• when moving volumes that contain multiple segments, and a mirror segment
  is not the first in the mapping table, running the “pvmove /dev/[device]
  /dev/[device]” command caused a kernel panic. A “kernel: Unable to handle
  kernel paging request at virtual address [address]” error was logged by
  syslog.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade to these updated
packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.