An Important Linux Kernel Security Patch Is Available for CentOS 7, Update Now

CentOS being derived from the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it always receives the latest security fixes from upstream. The updated kernel packages for CentOS 7 are here to patch a total of four vulnerabilities discovered lately and patched by Red Hat. These are a race condition flaw (CVE-2017-2636, reported by Alexander Popov) in Linux kernel’s N_HLDC driver, which could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root access by setting the HDLC line discipline on a TTY device, as well as a flaw (CVE-2017-2618) in the way Linux kernel handles the clearing of SELinux attributes on /proc/pid/attr files, which could lead to a system crash.