A PMC is 32 bits (ie an int). Since we pass it around as an unsigned long, we need to cast it before doing the comparison. This does not affect the upstream kernel as it is already fixed. This is an issue that was introduced in bug 720743. Upstream commit: http://git.kernel.org/linus/0837e3242c73566fc1c0196b4ec61779c25ffc93 Acknowledgements: Red Hat would like to thank Maynard Johnson for reporting this issue.
Assigned CVE-2011-4611 to this issue http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2011/q4/504
Created kernel tracking bugs for this issue Affects: fedora-all [bug 782688]
Statement: This issue did not affect the Linux kernels as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 as they did not have support for Performance event. It did not affect Red Hat Enterprise MRG as it did not provide support for PowerPC. This has been addressed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 via https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0350.html.
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2012:0350 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0350.html