Red Hat Security Alert: RHSA-2012-1589-01 - Low Kernel Security Flaw

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.
This update fixes the following security issue:
* A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's dl2k driver, used by certain D-Link Gigabit Ethernet adapters, restricted IOCTLs. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to issue potentially harmful IOCTLs, which could cause Ethernet adapters using the dl2k driver to malfunction (for example, losing network connectivity). (CVE-2012-2313, Low)
Red Hat would like to thank Stephan Mueller for reporting this issue.
This update also fixes the following bug:
* The kernel allows high priority real time tasks, such as tasks scheduled with the SCHED_FIFO policy, to be throttled. Previously, the CPU stop tasks were scheduled as high priority real time tasks and could be thus throttled accordingly. However, the replenishment timer, which is responsible for clearing a throttle flag on tasks, could be pending on the just disabled CPU. This could lead to the situation that the throttled tasks were never scheduled to run. Consequently, if any of such tasks was needed to complete the CPU disabling, the system became unresponsive. This update introduces a new scheduler class, which gives a task the highest possible system priority and such a task cannot be throttled. The stop-task scheduling class is now used for the CPU stop tasks, and the system shutdown completes as expected in the scenario described. (BZ#876077)
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.