It was found that Ruby did not properly reinitialize the random number generator, when forking new Ruby process. A local attacker could use this flaw to easier predict random numbers. References: [1] https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=704409 [2] http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2011/07/02/ruby-1-8-7-p352-released/ [3] http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/4579 [4] http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi?view=revision&revision=31713 [5] http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi?view=revision&revision=32050 [6] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/11/1 [7] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/12/14
This issue affects the version of the ruby package, as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. -- This issue affects the versions of the ruby package, as shipped with Fedora release of 14 and 15. Please schedule an update.
Created ruby tracking bugs for this issue Affects: fedora-all [bug 722419]
It clearly seems that there are two issues here, and it should not be covered in the same CVE id. More details and request for split at: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.oss.general/5446/focus=5524
The second issue has been assigned the name CVE-2011-2705, which is specific to the securerandom.rb module, which svn r32050 corrects.
Statement CVE-2011-3009: The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this issue as having low security impact, a future update may address this flaw in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2011-3009 to the following vulnerability: Name: CVE-2011-3009 URL: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2011-3009 Assigned: 20110805 Reference: http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/20/1 Reference: http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/4338 Ruby before 1.8.6-p114 does not reset the random seed upon forking, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to predict the values of random numbers by leveraging knowledge of the number sequence obtained in a different child process, a related issue to CVE-2003-0900. (I'm not sure why MITRE assigned CVE-2011-3009 to this as it sounds like this is an exact duplicate of CVE-2011-2686; I've inquired as to what makes this different from CVE-2011-2686).
I've not heard anything back from MITRE about the difference, but I've looked at the CVE entry for CVE-2011-2686 and it reads: Ruby before 1.8.7-p352 does not reset the random seed upon forking, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to predict the values of random numbers by leveraging knowledge of the number sequence obtained in a different child process, a related issue to CVE-2003-0900. NOTE: this issue exists because of a regression during Ruby 1.8.6 development. Which has me a bit more confused. By the sounds of the description, CVE-2011-2686 was fixed in 1.8.6, but regressed which caused the flaw in 1.8.7 (I have no idea if this is the case). I suspect we should use CVE-2011-2686 to describe any fixes in 1.8.6 and CVE-2011-3009 to describe any fixes in 1.8.7.
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2011:1581 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-1581.html
Created attachment 555084 [details] RHEL-5.8 patch
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2012:0070 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0070.html