(RHSA-2011:1532) Moderate: kexec-tools security, bug fix, and enhancement update

Kexec allows for booting a Linux kernel from the context of an already
running kernel.

Kdump used the SSH (Secure Shell) “StrictHostKeyChecking=no” option when
dumping to SSH targets, causing the target kdump server’s SSH host key not
to be checked. This could make it easier for a man-in-the-middle attacker
on the local network to impersonate the kdump SSH target server and
possibly gain access to sensitive information in the vmcore dumps.
(CVE-2011-3588)

mkdumprd created initrd files with world-readable permissions. A local user
could possibly use this flaw to gain access to sensitive information, such
as the private SSH key used to authenticate to a remote server when kdump
was configured to dump to an SSH target. (CVE-2011-3589)

mkdumprd included unneeded sensitive files (such as all files from the
“/root/.ssh/” directory and the host’s private SSH keys) in the resulting
initrd. This could lead to an information leak when initrd files were
previously created with world-readable permissions. Note: With this update,
only the SSH client configuration, known hosts files, and the SSH key
configured via the newly introduced sshkey option in “/etc/kdump.conf” are
included in the initrd. The default is the key generated when running the
“service kdump propagate” command, “/root/.ssh/kdump_id_rsa”.
(CVE-2011-3590)

Red Hat would like to thank Kevan Carstensen for reporting these issues.

This update also fixes several bugs and adds various enhancements.
Space precludes documenting all of these changes in this advisory.
Documentation for these bug fixes and enhancements will be available
shortly from the Technical Notes document, linked to in the References
section.

All kexec-tools users should upgrade to this updated package, which
contains backported patches to resolve these issues and add these
enhancements.