[Triumf-linux-managers] Security update for glibc on Enterprise Linux (SL, CentOS..)

[Andrew Daviel]

A vulnerability has been found in glibc that, while inadvertently fixed in 
consumer versions of Linux, remains in the stable/entreprise versions such 
as RHEL and therefore in Scientific Linux and CentOS.

Managers should update glibc, and as a precaution, restart any 
public-facing services such as mail or webservers that may call 
gethostbyname().

New versions of glibc are available from mirror.triumf.ca for SL5,6 and 
CentOS 5,6 and should normally be installed automatically (but that will 
not restart servers).

e.g. repeat until success (glibc showing a recent build date such as Jan 
27 2015)

   # rpm -qi glibc|grep Release
   # yum update glibc   (if not up-to-date)
   # yum clean metadata  (if required)

then

# service httpd restart
etc.


A proof of concept remote exploit exists for the Exim mail server.

A test program is included in the openwall post below.

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/01/27/9
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0090.html

Qualys Security Advisory CVE-2015-0235 - GHOST: glibc gethostbyname buffer overflow

-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager