The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system. This update fixes the following security issues: * a flaw was found in the Realtek r8169 Ethernet driver in the Linux kernel. pci_unmap_single presented a memory leak that could lead to IOMMU space exhaustion and a system crash. An attacker on the local network could trigger this flaw by using jumbo frames for large amounts of network traffic. * NULL pointer dereference flaws were found in the r128 driver in the Linux kernel. Checks to test if the Concurrent Command Engine state was initialized were missing in private IOCTL functions. An attacker could use these flaws to cause a local denial of service or escalate their privileges. * an information leak was found in the Linux kernel. On AMD64 systems, 32-bit processes could access and read certain 64-bit registers by temporarily switching themselves to 64-bit mode. * the unix_stream_connect function in the Linux kernel did not check if a UNIX domain socket was in the shutdown state. This could lead to a deadlock. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service. This update also fixes the following bugs: * an iptables rule with the recent module and a hit count value greater than the ip_pkt_list_tot parameter , did not have any effect over packets, as the hit count could not be reached. * in environments that use dual-controller storage devices with the cciss driver, Device-Mapper Multipath maps could not be detected and configured, due to the cciss driver not exporting the bus attribute via sysfs. This attribute is now exported. * the kernel crashed with a divide error when a certain joystick was attached. * a bug in the mptctl_do_mpt_command function in the mpt driver may have resulted in crashes during boot on i386 systems with certain adapters using the mpt driver, and also running the hugemem kernel. * on certain hardware, the igb driver was unable to detect link statuses correctly. This may have caused problems for network bonding, such as failover not occurring. * the RHSA-2009:1024 update introduced a regression. After updating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 and rebooting, network links often failed to be brought up for interfaces using the forcedeth driver. "no link during initialization" messages may have been logged. * the RHSA-2009:1024 update introduced a second regression. On certain systems, PS/2 keyboards failed to work. * a bug in checksum offload calculations could have crashed the bnx2x firmware when the iptable_nat module was loaded, causing network traffic to stop. * a check has been added to the IPv4 code to make sure that the routing table data structure, rt, is not NULL, to help prevent future bugs in functions that call ip_append_data from being exploitable. * possible kernel pointer dereferences on systems with several NFS mounts , which in rare cases may have caused a system crash, have been resolved. Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.