RHSA-2015:0092 — Security Advisory

Updated glibc packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Critical security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

The glibc packages provide the standard C libraries (libc), POSIX thread libraries (libpthread), standard math libraries (libm), and the Name Server Caching Daemon (nscd) used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function correctly.

A heap-based buffer overflow was found in glibc's __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function, which is used by the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() glibc function calls. A remote attacker able to make an application call either of these functions could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application. (CVE-2015-0235)

Red Hat would like to thank Qualys for reporting this issue.

All glibc users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue.