(RHSA-2015:2079) Moderate: binutils security, bug fix, and enhancement update

The binutils packages provide a set of binary utilities.

Multiple buffer overflow flaws were found in the libbdf library used by
various binutils utilities. If a user were tricked into processing a
specially crafted file with an application using the libbdf library, it
could cause the application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary
code. (CVE-2014-8485, CVE-2014-8501, CVE-2014-8502, CVE-2014-8503,
CVE-2014-8504, CVE-2014-8738)

An integer overflow flaw was found in the libbdf library used by various
binutils utilities. If a user were tricked into processing a specially
crafted file with an application using the libbdf library, it could cause
the application to crash. (CVE-2014-8484)

A directory traversal flaw was found in the strip and objcopy utilities.
A specially crafted file could cause strip or objdump to overwrite an
arbitrary file writable by the user running either of these utilities.
(CVE-2014-8737)

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Binary files started by the system loader could lack the Relocation
  Read-Only (RELRO) protection even though it was explicitly requested when
  the application was built. This bug has been fixed on multiple
  architectures. Applications and all dependent object files, archives, and
  libraries built with an alpha or beta version of binutils should be rebuilt
  to correct this defect. (BZ#1200138, BZ#1175624)

• The ld linker on 64-bit PowerPC now correctly checks the output format
  when asked to produce a binary in another format than PowerPC. (BZ#1226864)

• An important variable that holds the symbol table for the binary being
  debugged has been made persistent, and the objdump utility on 64-bit
  PowerPC is now able to access the needed information without reading an
  invalid memory region. (BZ#1172766)

• Undesirable runtime relocations described in RHBA-2015:0974. (BZ#872148)

The update adds these enhancements:

• New hardware instructions of the IBM z Systems z13 are now supported by
  assembler, disassembler, and linker, as well as Single Instruction,
  Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions. (BZ#1182153)

• Expressions of the form: “FUNC@localentry” to refer to the local entry
  point for the FUNC function (if defined) are now supported by the PowerPC
  assembler. These are required by the ELFv2 ABI on the little-endian variant
  of IBM Power Systems. (BZ#1194164)

All binutils users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these
enhancements.