Important: kernel security and bug fix update

Updated kernel packages that fix various security issues and several bugs
in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel are now available.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.

These updated packages fix the following security issues:

A flaw was found in the handling of IEEE 802.11 frames, which affected
several wireless LAN modules. In certain situations, a remote attacker
could trigger this flaw by sending a malicious packet over a wireless
network, causing a denial of service (kernel crash).
(CVE-2007-4997, Important)

A memory leak was found in the Red Hat Content Accelerator kernel patch.
A local user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service (memory
exhaustion). (CVE-2007-5494, Important)

Additionally, the following bugs were fixed:

* when running the "ls -la" command on an NFSv4 mount point, incorrect
file attributes, and outdated file size and timestamp information were
returned. As well, symbolic links may have been displayed as actual files.

* a bug which caused the cmirror write path to appear deadlocked after a
successful recovery, which may have caused syncing to hang, has been
resolved.

* a kernel panic which occurred when manually configuring LCS interfaces on
the IBM S/390 has been resolved.

* when running a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system, it was possible to
mmap page at address 0 without flag MAP_FIXED set. This has been
resolved in these updated packages.

* the Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) Watchdog did not increment the NMI
interrupt counter in "/proc/interrupts" on systems running an AMD Opteron
CPU. This caused systems running NMI Watchdog to restart at regular
intervals.

* a bug which caused the diskdump utility to run very slowly on devices
using Fusion MPT has been resolved.

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve
these issues.

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

315051 - CVE-2007-5494 open(O_ATOMICLOOKUP) leaks dentry
346341 - CVE-2007-4997 kernel ieee80211 off-by-two integer underflow
371551 - NFS problem#3 of IT 106473 - 32-bit jiffy wrap around - NFS inode
399661 - cmirror write path appears deadlocked after recovery is successful
400801 - LTC39618-kernel panic making lcs interfaces online on LPAR
400811 - [RHEL4] Odd behaviour in mmap
404741 - [RHEL4] NMI Watchdog Not Working in RHEL 4 U6 Opteron Systems
404781 - RHEL4.6 [REGRESSION] diskdump works with mpt fusion too slow.

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2007-4997
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2007-5494
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important