(RHSA-2008:0607) Important: kernel security and bug fix update

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

These updated packages fix the following security issue:

• a possible kernel memory leak was found in the Linux kernel Simple
  Internet Transition (SIT) INET6 implementation. This could allow a local
  unprivileged user to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2008-2136, Important)

As well, these updated packages fix the following bugs:

• a possible kernel hang on hugemem systems, due to a bug in NFS, which may
  have caused systems to become unresponsive, has been resolved.

• an inappropriate exit condition occurred in the architecture-specific
  “mmap()” realization, which fell into an infinite loop under certain
  conditions. On 64-bit systems, this issue may have manifested itself to
  users as a soft lockup, or process hangs.

• due to a bug in hardware initialization in the “ohci_hcd” kernel module,
  the kernel may have failed with a NULL pointer dereference. On 64-bit
  PowerPC systems, this may have caused booting to fail, and drop to xmon. On
  other platforms, a kernel oops occurred.

• due to insufficient locks in task termination code, a panic may have
  occurred in the “sys_times()” system call on SMP machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade to these updated
packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.