(RHSA-2009:0053) Important: kernel-rt security and bug fix update

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

These updated packages address the following security issues:

• a flaw was found in the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) subsystem. A
  local, unprivileged user could use the flaw to listen on the same socket
  more than once, possibly causing a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5079,
  Important)

• a buffer overflow flaw was found in the libertas driver. This could,
  potentially, lead to a remote denial of service when an invalid beacon or
  probe response was received. (CVE-2008-5134, Important)

• a race condition was found in the Linux kernel “inotify” watch removal
  and umount implementation. This could allow a local, unprivileged user
  to cause a privilege escalation or a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5182,
  Important)

• the sendmsg() function in the Linux kernel did not block during UNIX
  socket garbage collection. This could, potentially, lead to a local denial
  of service. (CVE-2008-5300, Important)

• a buffer overflow was found in the Linux kernel Partial Reliable Stream
  Control Transmission Protocol (PR-SCTP) implementation. This could,
  potentially, lead to a denial of service if a Forward-TSN chunk is received
  with a large stream ID. (CVE-2009-0065, Important)

• a deficiency was found in the libATA implementation. This could,
  potentially, lead to a denial of service. By default, the “/dev/sg*”
  devices are accessible only to the root user. (CVE-2008-5700, Low)

These updated packages also address numerous bugs, including the following:

• a race condition caused the timer to stop responding. This was fixed by
  correcting the behavior of the alloc_posix_timer() function.

• the kernel was behaving differently for varying file capabilities. This
  was resolved by ensuring the get_file_caps() function was preceded by
  clearing bprm->caps_*.

• a check was included on the limit of the shadow.bytes array, to prevent
  value outside the limits being written and over riding other data areas.

• the kernel-rt-2.6.24.7-81.el5rt kernel displayed a warning on boot
  stating that the hwclock failed. This was due to a compatibility problem
  with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 file system. It was resolved by adding
  a new udev rule that ensured /dev was set up correctly.

• the GPS clock daemon was becoming unstable due to a problem in adjtimex.
  The issue was located and corrected.

• the events_trace tracer was providing bad parameters to syscalls on i386
  machines. This was due to the sys_call interface needing to use the
  assembly linked annotation and the edx register being used before it was
  stored on the stack. Both these issues were corrected.

All Red Hat Enterprise MRG users should install this update which addresses
these vulnerabilities and fixes these bugs. For this update to take effect,
the system must be rebooted.