4.14. busybox
Updated busybox packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
BusyBox is a binary that combines a large number of common system utilities into a single executable. BusyBox provides replacements for most GNU fileutils, shellutils, and so on.
Bug Fix
- BZ#761532
- Previously, the findfs command did not release used file descriptors. Therefore, the system could run out of free file descriptors on the systems with a large amount (thousands) of block devices. As a consequence, findfs failed to check all existing block devices on the system which could cause other problems, such as a kdump service failure. This update modifies BusyBox so that findfs now releases file descriptors properly and checks all block devices as expected.
All users of BusyBox are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.
Updated busybox packages that fix two security issues and two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having low security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
BusyBox provides a single binary that includes versions of a large number of system commands, including a shell. This can be very useful for recovering from certain types of system failures, particularly those involving broken shared libraries.
Security Fixes
- CVE-2006-1168
- A buffer underflow flaw was found in the way the uncompress utility of BusyBox expanded certain archive files compressed using Lempel-Ziv compression. If a user were tricked into expanding a specially-crafted archive file with uncompress, it could cause BusyBox to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running BusyBox.
- CVE-2011-2716
- The BusyBox DHCP client, udhcpc, 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. Note: udhcpc is not used on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by default, and no DHCP client script is provided with the busybox packages.
Bug Fixes
- BZ#689659
- Prior to this update, the cp command wrongly returned the exit code 0 to indicate success if a device ran out of space while attempting to copy files of more than 4 gigabytes. This update modifies BusyBox, so that in such situations, the exit code 1 is returned. Now, the cp command shows correctly whether a process failed.
- BZ#756723
- Prior to this update, the findfs command failed to check all existing block devices on a system with thousands of block device nodes in "/dev/". This update modifies BusyBox so that findfs checks all block devices even in this case.
All users of busybox are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct these issues.
