Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) - changes made in 3.1-stable branch

The dates shown in braces indicate when an equivalent change went into Owl-current, where applicable. Note that although the 3.1 branch point was created in mid-2014, Owl 3.1 was never released (nor was it intended to be) and the Owl 3.1-stable branch was only released in January 2015.

Security fixes have a "Severity" specified for the issue(s) being fixed. The three comma-separated metrics given after "Severity:" are: risk impact (low, medium, or high), attack vector (local, remote, or indirect), and whether the attack may be carried out at will (active) or not (passive). Please note that the specified risk impact is just that, it is not the overall severity, so other metrics are not factored into it. For example, a "high" impact "local, passive" issue is generally of lower overall severity than a "high" impact "remote, active" one - this is left up to our users to consider given their specific circumstances.

Per our current conventions, a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability is generally considered to have a "low" risk impact (even if it is a "remote, active" one, which is to be considered separately as it may make the vulnerability fairly critical under specific circumstances). Some examples of "medium" impact vulnerabilities would be persistent DoS (where the DoS effect does not go away with a (sub)system restart), data loss, bugs enabling non-critical information leaks, cryptographic signature forgeries, and/or sending of or accepting spoofed/forged network traffic (where such behavior was unexpected), as long as they would not directly allow for a "high" impact attack. Finally, a typical "high" impact vulnerability would allow for privilege escalation such as ability to execute code as another user ID than the attacker's (a "local" attack) or without "legitimately" having such an ability (a "remote" attack).

The metrics specified are generally those for a worst case scenario, however in certain cases ranges such as "none to low" or/and "local to remote" may be specified, referring to the defaults vs. a worst case yet "legitimate" custom configuration. In some complicated cases, multiple issues or attacks may be dealt with at once. When those differ in their severity metrics, we use slashes to denote the possible combinations. For example, "low/none to high, remote/local" means that we've dealt with issue(s) or attack(s) that are "low, remote" and those that are "none to high, local". In those tricky cases, we generally try to clarify the specific issue(s) and their severities in the description.

Changes made between Owl 3.1 and Owl 3.1-stable.

(2020/05/19)
2020/05/20	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Merged the most relevant fixes from RHEL5's -436, including for the following local vulnerabilities: use-after-free in sys_mq_notify() allowing for a local root compromise and container escape by any user (CVE-2017-11176), divide-by-zero in __tcp_select_window() allowing for a local DoS (CVE-2017-14106), use-after-free in ALSA allowing for a local root compromise by a host user in group "audio" if the vulnerable kernel module is loaded (CVE-2017-15265). Also fixed is an inconsistency in modify_ldt(2)'s memory (de)allocation, which got introduced along with KPTI in our update to -431 and is known as Red Hat's "bug 1584622" and might have had local security impact. References:
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:3822
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2172
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-11176
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-14106
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-15265
https://blog.lexfo.fr/cve-2017-11176-linux-kernel-exploitation-part1.html

(2018/07/03)
2018/07/03	Package: gnupg
SECURITY FIX	Severity: medium, local/indirect, passive

Updated to 1.4.23, which, compared to 1.4.21, fixes a side-channel leak (CVE-2017-7526) and a bypass of signature verification in third-party programs that invoke GnuPG (CVE-2018-12020). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/07/06/8
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-7526
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/06/08/2
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-12020

(2018/06/28)
2018/07/03	Package: kernel

Fixed a regression introduced with the previous update (to -431) where some 32-bit syscalls would fail with EFAULT on a 64-bit kernel because of improper alignment of the newly introduced KAISER/KPTI trampoline stack. This fix is due to investigation and patch by Pavel Kankovsky and bug report by Chris Bopp.

(2018/05/23)
2018/05/23	Packages: procps, procps-ng
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, passive

Replaced procps with procps-ng 3.3.14 plus all Qualys patches fixing a number of issues that Qualys found during their security audit, including some issues that might have allowed successful attacks on a user (or root) invoking top(1) or other procps programs. References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/05/17/1
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1122
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1123
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1124
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1125
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1126

(2018/05/21)
2018/05/22	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: low to high, local, active

Updated to 2.6.18-431.el5.028stab123.1. This is a belated (with Owl being barely on life support at this point) addition of kernel page table isolation (KPTI) on x86-64 (only) as a software fix for Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) - an issue that allowed userspace processes to read kernel memory (except on AMD CPUs). Also included is a fix for the "POP SS" vulnerability (CVE-2018-8897), which allowed for a local DoS attack. However, this update does not mitigate the set of CPU vulnerabilities known as Spectre, although the exposure to them might be lower than it is in newer kernels because of the lack of eBPF. References:
https://meltdownattack.com
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-5754
https://www.triplefault.io/2018/05/spurious-db-exceptions-with-pop-ss.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/05/08/4
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-8897

(2017/10/25)
2018/05/22	Package: glibc
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, remote, active

Backported upstream fix for the recently discovered glob heap buffer overflow (CVE-2017-15670) and while at it also for integer overflows in pvalloc, valloc, posix_memalign/memalign/aligned_alloc (CVE-2013-4332). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/10/21/5
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22320
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-15670
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/09/12/6
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15855
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15856
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15857
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2013-4332

(2017/10/19)
2017/10/21	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, local, active

Updated to 2.6.18-419.el5.028stab122.4. This addresses the issue of Position Independent Executables' (PIE) data potentially overlapping in memory with their stack areas (CVE-2017-1000253). (Un)fortunately, on Owl we do not yet build our SUID/SGID binaries as PIE (which would be a security enhancement if it were not for this issue), so this did not affect Owl itself, but it could affect third-party SUID/SGID binaries installed on Owl (including e.g. as part of third-party distros in containers). The many other security issues also addressed with this upstream update, as compared to the much older upstream revision we built upon previously, had already been fixed or worked around in prior kernel updates for Owl. References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/09/26/16
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-1000253
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab122.4
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab122.3
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab122.2
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab122.1
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab120.3
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab120.2

(2017/06/19)
2017/06/29	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, local, active

On SUID/SGID exec, limit the size of argv+envp to 512 KiB and the stack size to 10 MiB, similarly to what grsecurity did in 2012. This prevents some of the stack/heap clash attacks described by Qualys, while some others were already prevented for years by our glibc hardening changes. References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/06/19/1
https://blog.qualys.com/securitylabs/2017/06/19/the-stack-clash

(2017/06/15)
2017/06/29	Package: db4
SECURITY FIX	Severity: medium to high, local, active

Don't open the DB_CONFIG file in the current directory. This unexpected property of db4 could have allowed for local DoS, information leaks, and privilege escalation via programs using db4, including Postfix. Reference:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/06/15/3

(2017/06/08)
2017/06/29	Package: kernel

Backported upstream reimplementation of restricted hard links, controllable via the fs.protected_hardlinks sysctl and enabled by default, similar to what we had as part of CONFIG_HARDEN_LINK in -ow patches and what grsecurity had as part of CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_LINK. This reinforces the group crontab vs. root privilege separation in our package of ISC/Vixie Cron. Reference:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/06/08/3

(2017/04/02)
2017/04/02	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Merged upstream fix to locking in net/ipv4/ping.c: ping_unhash(), where the race condition could have been exploited by container root into e.g. container escape. Without a vulnerability in ping(1), the issue was not triggerable by non-root users (neither host nor container). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/03/24/6
http://lists.openwall.net/netdev/2017/03/25/16

(2017/01/25)
2017/01/25	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Merged in a fix of use-after-free in the recvmmsg() exit path (CVE-2016-7117) from Red Hat's -417. The vulnerability appears likely to be exploitable locally. Remote exploitation might be possible as well, but would require specific (unlikely?) behavior of a service. References:
https://blog.lizzie.io/notes-about-cve-2016-7117.html
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2016-7117
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-7117

(2016/12/10)
2016/12/11	Package: kernel

Merged in Red Hat's CVE-2016-5195 "Dirty COW" fix while also keeping the mitigation introduced in Owl earlier. In the kernel build for x86-64, bumped up the maximum number of logical CPUs from 32 to 96, enabled support for NUMA, huge pages, hugetlbfs, modules for I2C and many sensors (similar to what's enabled in RHEL) and CPU microcode update.

(2016/10/23)
2016/10/24	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Added a mitigation for the "Dirty COW" Linux kernel privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2016-5195). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/10/21/1
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-5195

(2016/10/17 - 2016/10/21)
2016/10/24	Package: bind
SECURITY FIX	Severity: low, remote, active

Merged multiple DoS vulnerability fixes from Red Hat's package, most notably for two easily triggerable assertion failures (CVE-2016-2776, CVE-2016-2848). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/27/8
https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01419
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-2776
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/10/20/7
https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01433/74/CVE-2016-2848
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-2848

(2016/08/23)
2016/08/23	Package: openssh

Backported upstream fix for a use-after-free in sshd's debugging output, with no known security impact.

(2016/08/23)
2016/08/23	Package: openssl
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, remote, active

Updated to 1.0.0t, which fixes the "X509_ATTRIBUTE memory leak" (CVE-2015-3195) and "Race condition handling PSK identify hint" (CVE-2015-3196) vulnerabilities. Neither of these affects the uses of OpenSSL in Owl, but third-party applications using Owl's OpenSSL might be affected. The "high" impact potential is for the double-free possibility mentioned in the OpenSSL advisory, even though the OpenSSL team has rated the corresponding issue as "low" overall severity (possibly considering its low risk probability, or/and other mitigating factors). This Owl package update also adds a CA certificate bundle. Reference:
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20151203.txt

(2016/08/23)
2016/08/23	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: low, local, active

Updated to 2.6.18-408.el5.028stab120.1, which addresses several DoS vulnerabilities, and additionally fixed a kernel panic triggerable via the move_pages() syscall. Reference:
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5-testing/028stab120.1

(2016/08/23)
2016/08/23	Package: gnupg
SECURITY FIX	Severity: medium, remote, passive

Updated to 1.4.21, which, compared to 1.4.18, fixes side-channel leaks (CVE-2014-3591, CVE-2015-0837) and a bug in the random number generator where an attacker who obtains 4640 bits from the RNG could trivially predict the next 160 bits of output (CVE-2016-6313). References:
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2016q3/000395.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/17/8
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2015q4/000382.html
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2015q1/000363.html
http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/radioexp/

(2016/07/20)
2016/08/23	Package: passwdqc

In version 1.3.1, fixed a bug in pam_passwdqc's rarely used "non-unix" option. The bug existed since passwdqc 1.1.3, released in 2009. Reference:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/announce/2016/07/22/1

(2015/02/24 - 2016/07/08)
2016/08/23	Package: john

The development changes in JtR, from version 1.8.0.2 to version 1.8.0.9, have now been included in Owl 3.1-stable because they include bug fixes.

(2015/08/01)
2015/08/01	Package: openssl
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to medium, remote, passive to active

Updated to 1.0.0s, which fixes many Low and Moderate severity issues (per OpenSSL's classification), as well as one High severity issue in the client: silent downgrades of RSA to EXPORT_RSA (CVE-2015-0204), with the corresponding attack known as FREAK. References:
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20150108.txt
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20150319.txt
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20150611.txt
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-0204
https://freakattack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK

(2015/07/31)
2015/07/31	Package: bind
SECURITY FIX	Severity: low, remote, active

Merged multiple DoS vulnerability fixes from Red Hat's package, most notably for the easily triggerable error in handling of TKEY queries (CVE-2015-5477). References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/07/29/3
https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01272
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-5477

(2015/06/11)
2015/06/11	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Fixed OpenVZ container filesystem (simfs) escape vulnerability via bind mounts (CVE-2015-2925). References:
https://bugs.openvz.org/browse/OVZ-6296
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/04/03/7
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2015-2925
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1209367

(2015/06/09)
2015/06/09	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: high, local, active

Updated to 2.6.18-406.el5.028stab119.1. Most importantly, this fixes a possible I/O vector array overrun, which could allow for local privilege escalation (CVE-2015-1805). References:
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5-testing/028stab119.1
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-1042.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/06/06/2
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab118.1
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0164.html

(2015/01/28)
2015/01/28	Package: glibc
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, remote, active

Backported upstream's fix for a buffer overflow in gethostbyname*() functions, which could be triggered via a crafted IP address argument. Depending on the application that uses these functions, this vulnerability could allow a local or a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Due to the analysis by Qualys (referenced below), it is known that the issue could be exploited remotely via Exim (which we do not include in Owl) or locally via clockdiff or procmail if these are installed SUID/SGID or with filesystem capabilities (not the case on Owl). While there's no known security impact on Owl itself, Owl with third-party software added (as many real-world installs have) may be affected, with worst-case impact ranging up to a remote root compromise. References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/01/27/9
https://blog.qualys.com/laws-of-vulnerabilities/2015/01/27/the-ghost-vulnerability
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15014
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-0235

(2015/01/04)
2015/01/04	Package: openssl
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to medium, remote, active

Updated to 1.0.0o, which fixes "Information leak in pretty printing functions" (CVE-2014-3508), "Race condition in ssl_parse_serverhello_tlsext" (CVE-2014-3509), "Session Ticket Memory Leak" (CVE-2014-3567), and adds support for "SSL 3.0 Fallback protection" to let applications mitigate POODLE (CVE-2014-3566). References:
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140806.txt
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20141015.txt

(2015/01/04)
2015/01/04	Package: bash

Updated to 3.1 patchlevel 23.

(2015/01/04)
2015/01/04	Package: help2man

New package: help2man, which creates simple man pages from the output of programs. It currently generates the diff(1) man page during Owl build.

(2014/12/28)
2015/01/03	Package: kernel
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, local, active

Updated to 2.6.18-400.el5.028stab117.2, which most importantly fixes a local privilege escalation vulnerability on x86-64 (CVE-2014-9322). References:
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab117.2
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/12/15/6
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-2008.html
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-1959.html
https://openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab116.1
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2014-1196.html
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-1143.html
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-0926.html

(2014/10/25)
2015/01/03	Package: tzdata

Updated to 2014i.

(2014/09/25 - 2014/09/27)
2015/01/03	Package: bash
SECURITY FIX	Severity: none to high, remote, active

Updated to 3.1 patchlevel 19 with additional patches by Florian Weimer of Red Hat. This fixes vulnerabilities with and introduces security hardening of function imports, which could in many setups be exploited remotely. References:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/24/10
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/24/11
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/24/40
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/25/5
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/25/13
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/25/32
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/26/2
http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/09/quick-notes-about-bash-bug-its-impact.html
https://access.redhat.com/blogs/766093/posts/1976383
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-6271
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-7169
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-7186
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-7187

$Owl: Owl/doc/CHANGES-3.1-stable,v 1.1.2.26 2020/05/20 14:30:06 solar Exp $