The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system. * It was found that the Linux kernel"s ptrace subsystem allowed a traced process" instruction pointer to be set to a non-canonical memory address without forcing the non-sysret code path when returning to user space. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system. Note: The CVE-2014-4699 issue only affected systems using an Intel CPU. * A flaw was found in the way the pppol2tp_setsockopt and pppol2tp_getsockopt functions in the Linux kernel"s PPP over L2TP implementation handled requests with a non-SOL_PPPOL2TP socket option level. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the system. Red Hat would like to thank Andy Lutomirski for reporting CVE-2014-4699, and Sasha Levin for reporting CVE-2014-4943. All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.