Moderate: device-mapper-multipath security update

Updated device-mapper-multipath packages that fix a security issue are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.

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

The device-mapper multipath packages provide tools to manage multipath
devices by issuing instructions to the device-mapper multipath kernel
module, and by managing the creation and removal of partitions for
device-mapper devices.

It was discovered that the multipathd daemon set incorrect permissions on
the socket used to communicate with command line clients. An unprivileged,
local user could use this flaw to send commands to multipathd, resulting in
access disruptions to storage devices accessible via multiple paths and,
possibly, file system corruption on these devices. (CVE-2009-0115)

Users of device-mapper-multipath are advised to upgrade to these updated
packages, which contain a backported patch to resolve this issue. The
multipathd service must be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Important: the version of the multipathd daemon in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 has a known issue which may cause a machine to become unresponsive when
the multipathd service is stopped. This issue is tracked in the Bugzilla
bug #494582; a link is provided in the References section of this erratum.
Until this issue is resolved, we recommend restarting the multipathd
service by issuing the following commands in sequence:

# killall -KILL multipathd

# service multipathd restart

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/docs/DOC-11259

493330 - CVE-2009-0115 device-mapper-multipath: insecure permissions on multipathd.sock

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2009-0115
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=494582