Red Hat Security Advisory: glibc security update

Important

It was discovered that, under certain circumstances, glibc's getaddrinfo() function would send DNS queries to random file descriptors. An attacker could potentially use this flaw to send DNS queries to unintended recipients, resulting in information disclosure or data loss due to the application encountering corrupted data.

CWE-201 - Insertion of Sensitive Information Into Sent Data

A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was found in glibc's swscanf() function. An attacker able to make an application call the swscanf() function could use this flaw to crash that application or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application.

CWE-122 - Heap-based Buffer Overflow

A stack overflow flaw was found in glibc's swscanf() function. An attacker able to make an application call the swscanf() function could use this flaw to crash that application or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application.

CWE-121 - Stack-based Buffer Overflow

A buffer overflow flaw was found in the way glibc's gethostbyname_r() and other related functions computed the size of a buffer when passed a misaligned buffer as input. An attacker able to make an application call any of these functions with a misaligned buffer could use this flaw to crash the application or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application.

CWE-119 - Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

It was discovered that the nss_files backend for the Name Service Switch in glibc would return incorrect data to applications or corrupt the heap (depending on adjacent heap contents). A local attacker could potentially use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the system.

CWE-119 - Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer