openssl security update

Updated OpenSSL packages are available for Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.
These updates fix multiple protocol parsing bugs, which may cause a denial
of service (DoS) attack or cause SSL-enabled applications to crash.

[Updated 06 Jan 2003]
Added fixed packages for the ia64 architecture.

[Updated 06 Feb 2003]
Added fixed packages for Advanced Workstation 2.1

OpenSSL is a commercial-grade, full-featured, and open source toolkit
which implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer
Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose
cryptography library.

Portions of the SSL protocol data stream, which include the lengths of
structures which are being transferred, may not be properly validated.
This may allow a malicious server or client to cause an affected
application to crash or enter an infinite loop, which can be used as a
denial of service (DoS) attack if the application is a server. It has not
been verified if this issue could lead to further consequences such as
remote code execution.

These errata packages contain a patch to correct this vulnerability.
Please note that the original patch from the OpenSSL team had a mistake in
it which could possibly still allow buffer overflows to occur. This bug
is also fixed in these errata packages.

NOTE:

Please read the Solution section below as it contains instructions for
making sure that all SSL-enabled processes are restarted after the update
is applied.

Thanks go to the OpenSSL team for providing patches for these issues.

Because both client and server applications are affected by these
vulnerabilities, we advise users to reboot their systems after installing
these updates.

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

Please note that this update is only available via Red Hat Network. To
use Red Hat Network, launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following
command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system.

70111 - RHSA-2002:161 - OpenSSL protocol parsing bugs

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2002-0659

abstract, ASN.1, notation, OpenSSL, syntax