Please Install the Updated Packages.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system. These updated packages fix the following security issues: * the absence of a protection mechanism when attempting to access a critical section of code has been found in the Linux kernel open file descriptors control mechanism, fcntl. This could allow a local unprivileged user to simultaneously execute code, which would otherwise be protected against parallel execution. As well, a race condition when handling locks in the Linux kernel fcntl functionality, may have allowed a process belonging to a local unprivileged user to gain re-ordered access to the descriptor table. (CVE-2008-1669, Important) * a possible hypervisor panic was found in the Linux kernel. A privileged user of a fully virtualized guest could initiate a stress-test File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transfer between the guest and the hypervisor, possibly leading to hypervisor panic. (CVE-2008-1619, Important) * the absence of a protection mechanism when attempting to access a critical section of code, as well as a race condition, have been found in the Linux kernel file system event notifier, dnotify. This could allow a local unprivileged user to get inconsistent data, or to send arbitrary signals to arbitrary system processes. (CVE-2008-1375, Important) Red Hat would like to thank Nick Piggin for responsibly disclosing the following issue: * when accessing kernel memory locations, certain Linux kernel drivers registering a fault handler did not perform required range checks. A local unprivileged user could use this flaw to gain read or write access to arbitrary kernel memory, or possibly cause a kernel crash. (CVE-2008-0007, Important) * the absence of sanity-checks was found in the hypervisor block backend driver, when running 32-bit paravirtualized guests on a 64-bit host. The number of blocks to be processed per one request from guest to host, or vice-versa, was not checked for its maximum value, which could have allowed a local privileged user of the guest operating system to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2007-5498, Important) * it was discovered that the Linux kernel handled string operations in the opposite way to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). This could allow a local unprivileged user to cause memory corruption. (CVE-2008-1367, Low) As well, these updated packages fix the following bugs: * on IBM System z architectures, when running QIOASSIST enabled QDIO devices in an IBM z/VM environment, the output qu ... Description truncated, for more information please check the Reference URL

kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server)

• https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhsa-announce/2008-May/msg00001.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25