B.16.3. RHSA-2011:0428 — Important: dhcp security update
Updated dhcp packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, and 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a protocol that allows individual devices on an IP network to get their own network configuration information, including an IP address, a subnet mask, and a broadcast address.
- CVE-2011-0997
- It was discovered that the DHCP client daemon, dhclient, did not sufficiently sanitize certain options provided in DHCP server replies, such as the client hostname. A malicious DHCP server could send such an option with a specially-crafted value to a DHCP client. If this option's value was saved on the client system, and then later insecurely evaluated by a process that assumes the option is trusted, it could lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of that process.
Red Hat would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for reporting this issue.
All dhclient users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue.
