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LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 10, 2005

A big setback on software patents

Up until the last moment, it looked like things might go the right way. The European Council's attempt to adopt the software patent directive as a no-debate item seemed doomed as a result of opposition from Denmark and a few other countries. In the end, however, the Council violated its own procedural rules by adopting the directive anyway, and nobody stood up to stop it. Barring an unlikely sequence of events, software patents will become the law in the European Union.

The unlikely sequence of events is this: the European Parliament will have a second reading of the directive in the next few months; at that reading, it will have the opportunity to reject or amend the directive. The Parliament had, the first time through, added amendments which made it clear that the patenting of software was not to be allowed, so there is reason for hope. The problem is that, on the second reading, an absolute majority of votes is required for any amendment. Simply getting enough members into the chamber to create a majority is often a problem with the European Parliament, so getting enough of them to vote for positive changes in the patent directive will be doubly challenging. To many observers, fixing a directive on the second reading seems just about impossible.

There is reason to hope, however. The fact that the Council ignored the Parliament's request to restart the procedure and the manner in which the directive was adopted has upset a number of members of Parliament. These members may just find enough energy to haul themselves down to the debate and vote to reassert the Parliament's authority. If these members continue to hear from their constituents in the mean time, they should be even more motivated.

In other words, now is not the time to give up and let up on the pressure. Instead, it is more important than ever that EU citizens express their views to their representatives. With enough effort, this battle might, just yet, be won.

And it is an important battle. The possible effects of software patents on small European businesses have been well discussed. But the absence of software patents in Europe has had a chilling effect on software patent enforcement in general. Currently, a patent holder could make life difficult for free software in the U.S., but European developers would just sneer in that smug manner unique to Europeans talking about American ways. So a patent challenge against, say, the Linux kernel could be a problem for an American company or developer, but it would be unlikely to impede Linux itself.

In a world with global software patent legislation, however, the situation is different. A patent challenge could shut down Linux over much of the planet; there would be no place for the software to run to. For this reason, European resistance to software patents helps to protect all of us; the forces behind software patenting understand that fact well. So we must hope that the European Parliament can find the energy to stand up for its rights.

Comments (26 posted)

Is the kernel development process broken?

According to some, the 2.6 development process has gone far out of control. Wildly destabilizing patches are routinely accepted, to the point that every 2.6.x release is really a development kernel in disguise. There are no more stable kernels anymore. As evidence, they point out certain high-profile regressions, such as the failure of 2.6.11 to work with certain Dell keyboards.

It is true that the process has changed in 2.6, and that each 2.6 release tends to contain a great deal of new stuff. The situation is nowhere near as bad as some people claim, however. The problems which have turned up have tended to be minor, and most have not affected all that many users. Big, embarrassing security bugs, data corruption issues, etc. have been mostly notable in their absence. Kernel developers like Andrew Morton don't think there is a problem:

I would maintain that we're still fixing stuff faster than we're breaking stuff. If you look at the fixes which are going into the tree (and there are a HUGE number of fixes), many of them are addressing problems which have been there for a long time.

Even so, there is a certain feeling that some 2.6 kernels have been released with problems which should not have been there. Last week, in an effort to improve the situation, Linus posted a proposal for a slight modification to the kernel release process. The new scheme would have set aside even-numbered kernel releases (2.6.12, 2.6.14, ...) as "extra-stable" kernels which would include nothing but bug fixes. Odd-numbered releases would continue to include more invasive patches. The idea was that an even-numbered release would follow fairly closely after the previous odd-numbered release and would fix any regressions or other problems which had turned up. With luck, people could install an even-numbered release with relative confidence.

Over the course of a lengthy discussion, an apparent consensus formed: the real problem is a lack of testing. In theory, most patches are extensively tested in the -mm tree before being merged. -mm does work well for many things, and it has helped to improve the quality of patches being merged into the mainline. But the -mm kernels are considered to be far too unstable by many users, so they are not tested as widely as anybody would like. Even quite a few kernel developers work with the mainline kernels, since they provide a more stable development platform.

The next step in the testing process is Linus's -rc releases. These kernels, too, are not tested as heavily as one might like. Many developers blame the fact that most of the -rc kernels are not really release candidates; they are merge points and an indication that a release is getting closer. Since users do not see the -rc kernels as true release candidates, they tend to shy away from them. For what it's worth, Linus disagrees with the perception of his -rc kernels:

Have people actually _looked_ at the -rc releases? They are very much done when I reach the point and say "ok, let's calm down". The first one is usually pretty big and often needs some fixing, simply because the first one is _inevitably_ (and by design) the one that gets the pent-up demand from the previous calming down period.

But it's very much a call to "ok, guys, calm down now".

The fact remains, however, that many people see a "release candidate" rather differently than Linus does.

There are some -rc kernels which clearly are release candidates; 2.6.11-rc5 is an obvious example. But even that kernel did not see enough testing to turn up the Dell keyboard problem.

The real problem seems to have two components. The first is that widespread testing by users is a vital part of the free software development process. This is especially true for the kernel: no kernel developer has access to all of the strange hardware out there, but the user community, as a whole, does. The only way to get the necessary level of testing coverage is to have large numbers of users do it. But here is where the second piece of the puzzle comes in: most users are unwilling to perform this testing on anything other than official mainline kernel releases. So certain classes of bugs are only found after such a release takes place.

A solution which was proposed was to bring back the concept of a four-number release: 2.6.11.1, for example. These releases would exist solely to deal with any show-stopper bugs which turn up after a major mainline release. Linus was negative about this idea, mostly because he didn't think anybody would be willing to do that work:

I'll tell you what the problem is: I don't think you'll find anybody to do the parallel "only trivial patches" tree. They'll go crazy in a couple of weeks. Why? Because it's a _damn_ hard problem. Where do you draw the line? What's an acceptable patch? And if you get it wrong, people will complain _very_ loudly, since by now you've "promised" them a kernel that is better than the mainline. In other words: there's almost zero glory, there are no interesting problems, and there will absolutely be people who claim that you're a dick-head and worse, probably on a weekly basis.

Linus went on, however, to outline how the process might work if a "sucker" were found who wanted to do it. The charter for this tree would have to be extremely restricted, with many rules limiting which patches could be accepted. The "sucker tree" would only take very small, clearly correct patches which fix a serious, user-visible bug. Some sort of committee would rule on patches, and would easily be able to exclude any which do not appear to meet the criteria. These conditions, says Linus, might make it possible to maintain the sucker tree, if a suitable sucker could be found.

As it turns out, a sucker stepped forward. Greg Kroah-Hartman has volunteered to maintain this tree for now, and to find a new maintainer when he reaches his limit. Chris Wright has volunteered to help. Greg released 2.6.11.1 as an example of how the process would work; it contains three patches: two compile fixes, and the obligatory Dell keyboard fix. 2.6.11.2 followed on March 9 with a single security fix. So the process has begun to operate.

Greg and Chris have also put together a set of rules on how the extra-stable tree will operate. To be considered for this tree, a patch must be "obviously correct," no bigger than 100 lines, a fix for a real bug which is seen to be affecting users, etc. There is a new stable@kernel.org address to which such patches should be sent. Patches which appear to qualify will be added to the queue and considered by a review committee (which has not yet been named, but it "will be made up of a number of kernel developers who have volunteered for this task, and a few that haven't").

The rules seem to be acceptable to most developers. There was one suggestion that, to qualify, patches must also be accepted into the mainline kernel. Being merged into the mainline would ensure wider testing of the patches, and would also serve to minimize the differences between the stable and mainline trees. The problem with this idea is that, often, the minimal fix which is best suited to an extra-stable tree is not the fix that the developers want for the long term. The real fix for a bug may involve wide-ranging changes, API changes, etc., but that sort of patch conflicts with the other rules for the extra-stable tree. So a "must be merged into the mainline" rule probably will not be added, at least not in that form.

How much this new tree will help is yet to be seen. It may be that its presence will simply cause many users to hold off testing until the first extra-stable release is made. This tree provides a safe repository for critical fixes, but those fixes cannot be made until the bugs are found. Finding those bugs requires widespread testing; no new kernel tree can change that fact.

Comments (32 posted)

The 2005 Debian Project Leader election

March 9, 2005

This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.

The Debian Project Leader (DPL) election is fast approaching. The nomination period ended on February 28, and the campaigning period runs through March 21. The field of candidates is much broader than in recent years, with six serious candidates vying for the role of Debian Project Leader. Current DPL Martin Michlmayr is not running for re-election.

The candidates, and their platforms, for 2005 are Matthew Garrett, Andreas Schuldei, Angus Lees, Anthony Towns, Jonathan Walther, and Branden Robinson.

We sent a list of questions to each candidate to find out where they stand on issues facing Debian in 2005. The first question we posed to the candidates was how they would help to ensure that Sarge would be released this year, and if too much emphasis was placed on a new stable release.

In his platform, Walther endorsed the idea of a six-month release cycle, borrowed from the OpenBSD project, saying it could "turn Debian into a monster powerhouse of software goodness." In his response, he added that he was unsure of the limits of the DPL's authority, but would do "everything in my power to get Sarge out the door immediately, as-is, and formalize the OpenBSD/Ubuntu/Xouvert 6-month release cycle."

Towns responded that there were a variety of reasons that Sarge had been delayed, and that "the release team currently have a handle on them." He also said that releasing Sarge is "the highest priority for the project at this point, and the highest priority of the DPL is to do everything possible to ensure that the release team and those working on resolving the remaining issues have the support and resources they need to do their work quickly and effectively."

Lees pointed out that the DPL "is not a position with direct control over Debian's actions" and that the DPL "is there to provide a single point of contact with the outside world and to ensure the relevant groups within Debian coordinate effectively." He also said that he is confident that the Sarge release would go out this year without intervention from the DPL, but "would of course try to ensure that the relevant technical teams have the resources they need to avoid any further delays."

As for the importance of stable releases, Lees said that the stable releases are necessary to provide "a static fork to provide security fixes against and a known minimum point from which package maintainers must ensure smooth upgrades." The ideal release point, according to Lees, would be "around the 1.5-2.5 year point, so shorter than the Sarge release cycle - but not by much."

Garrett noted that Sarge is close enough to release that "anything the DPL does is more likely to slow things down than speed them up."

The release team have assured me that the list of awkward problems is now small and under control, and I'm inclined to trust them on this.

A more interesting question is probably how we can prevent Sarge from happening again. A large part of the problem is that many people have lost faith in us ever making timely releases, which ends up costing us a lot - without the feeling that you're working towards a release, there's far less incentive to make sure that your code is in good condition and help track down bugs in other packages. I want to deal with this problem by making people believe that we can actually make releases when we say we will, and I think the first step towards that will be to make sure that we have a list of concrete goals for our next release the moment we've finished with Sarge.

He also said that slow releases not only cost Debian users, but development effort as well.

Robinson told LWN that he would work closely with the Release Management team to find out what they need and "try to get those needs satisfied, whether they involve hardware for build daemons, additional personnel for the security or debian-installer teams, or simply general encouragement (some would say whip-cracking) to get the release-critical bug count down."

He also said that Debian is compared "unfairly and unfavorably to the bleeding-edge nature of some distributions" and could "greatly mitigate that criticism by establishing a more predictable and regular release cycle.."

Finally, Schuldei said that Sarge should be in "deep freeze already" by the time the next DPL takes office on April 17. Schuldei also said that regular releases "are important for Debian and are one of my priorities."

The next question we posed to the candidates is whether Ubuntu had hurt Debian by drawing away development effort, how Debian should work with projects derived from Debian and if Debian was "infrastructure" for other projects.

Schuldei responded that Ubuntu "cherry-picked from Debian's most active developers."

When your hobby becomes your job, it is easy to lose interest in participating in the hobby outside of work. And working in a start-up company can easily become an all-consuming activity. Given this combination, it was probably inevitable that developers working on Ubuntu would have less time and energy to expend on Debian itself.

Those Ubuntu developers who used to work on Debian infrastructure were missed painfully, indeed. I hope that "Small Teams" as described in my platform can help by building lots of small multiplying knowledge pools which would make Debian resilient against loss of single individuals and enable it to grow able successors very quickly.

Schuldei told LWN that Debian "should more actively incorporate the good things that it sees other distributions" do and that if Debian "managed the 'taking' as well as the 'giving' [to other projects] there would be little limit to its potential."

Robinson says that Canonical Ltd. (the company that sponsors Ubuntu) is a "mixed blessing."

Previous companies that centered their identities around Debian (such as Stormix and Progeny) have not had the resources to hire more than a handful of Debian developers. Canonical has hired many. It's a good thing to see so many Debian developers able to more closely align their careers with their passions -- it's something I've enjoyed for nearly five years, so I can hardly begrudge others that same condition.

At the same time, Canonical's interests are not identical to Debian's. If Canonical is to operate anything like a conventional business that realizes revenue, it cannot help but pursue paths to do so. The Debian Project doesn't have that pressure on it. Inevitably in such an environment, at least some Debian developers who work for a commercial interest are going to experience tension between what's good for Debian and what's good for their employer, even if that divergence is perceived as merely short-term. In the short term, Debian needs to release sarge. We cannot count on Canonical, Linspire, Progeny, Xandros, Hewlett-Packard, or any of Debian's other benefactors to solve our problems for us -- they will not supply the magical second step between "collect underpants" and "RELEASE!", to spin an old joke.

He also said that Debian has to be "frank about it" and accept that some developers may be drawn away from Debian.

Garrett pointed out that Ubuntu "has taken some effort away from Debian, but it's also contributed a lot back."

One of the major advantages that Ubuntu has over Debian is that their development process makes it much easier to push new technologies. We've already gained from that in at least one case, since Debian's Project Utopia stack is heavily based on the code in Ubuntu. That would have been much harder to coordinate if it hadn't been demonstrated in a working scenario first. Remember that Ubuntu hasn't existed for all that long - it's hard to have any great certainty what the long-term effects will be.

One of the fundamental reasons for free software is the right to produce derived works, and I think that making it as easy as possible for others to produce derived distributions is the best way for Debian to support that. The number of distributions based on Debian is large enough that I think we class as infrastructure, but don't think that's incompatible with making releases.

Providing employment for Debian developers is "a good thing" according to Lees, though he notes that "some inevitable divergence between Ubuntu and Debian as Ubuntu strives to differentiate itself."

The core axiom of free software however is that having someone copy and modify your software doesn't reduce its value to you. Whatever happens, Debian is a process not a product and it will eventually incorporate any code that the Developers deem worthwhile.

What I'm really excited about from Ubuntu is some of the tools they're working on, like bug trackers and version control tools. These tools are being developed specifically for the unique needs of distributors, rather than authors, and it will be very interesting to see what they become.

Towns said that the only way Ubuntu draws developers away from Debian "is by providing a better environment for hacking -- whether that be by paying for the work, or being more fun, or being more satisfying, or all of the above."

I think it's great that there are projects that some people find more enjoyable than Debian, and the great thing about free software is that those of us who prefer Debian can just take the work they do for Ubuntu and use it ourselves. And vice-versa, too -- all without anyone being unhappy about code theft or having to involve lawyers or formal agreements or anything of the sort.

I think Debian works quite well both as a distribution of its own, and as infrastructure for other distributions; I hope it will improve as both.

According to Walther, projects like Ubuntu or Knoppix help Debian rather than hurt it. "Because of our licensing, we can always fold things back in from other projects that work out well."

We also asked candidates if they had any idea why so many people were running this year, as opposed to past years that saw only a few candidates.

Walther quipped, "because the incumbent decided not to run for re-election."

Schuldei told LWN "some of the candidates clearly believe that Debian is in need of their special knowledge or ability. I myself believe that my vision for Debian and my experience in implementing change in social groups will help the Debian Project to reach new heights and strength."

Robinson said that "people are getting a better idea of what they want out of a Project Leader."

I don't know of many precedents in our field; no other free software project of Debian's size entrusts its entire membership with electing its leadership. We're striving to identify the right balance of personality traits and experience that will equip us to face new challenges with confidence, rather than butting our heads against the same old brick walls that have stymied us for years.

Garrett said that he can't speak for the other candidates, but "I'm standing because I think Debian has problems that need fixing, and I think being DPL is the best way that I can help fix them. Perhaps our problems are more obvious this year than in the past?" Lees told LWN that he has no idea why so many people are running for DPL, and that he's running "at the insistence of several other Debian developers, probably in response to some of the more radical factions that are gaining influence within Debian." Towns said that there have been "a lot of fairly controversial questions raised or decided...and in the midst of all this the next release of our operating system has continued slipping. It seems plausible to me that the range of candidates represent the range of different views within the project of how to approach these issues."

Another topic that comes up frequently when discussing delays for Sarge is dropping architectures. We asked the candidates if they thought Debian should drop any of its architectures in order to release on a more timely basis. There was not a great deal of enthusiasm for this idea among DPL candidates. Walther is against the idea of dropping architectures altogether. "I see no need to drop any architecture, but I do see it as a good thing to release each architecture separately. This prevents the lowest common denominator from retarding the distribution as a whole."

Towns said, simply, "That's a decision for the release and archive teams to make." Lees said that there was "no correlation between the number of architectures and any delay in release," as far as he could see. Schuldei said, "yes, that's one possible option."

Garrett told LWN that dropping architectures would not speed up the release, and would "undoubtedly reduce the quality of our distribution. There are whole classes of bugs that only show up when you port to a wide range of platforms."

In any case, which architectures should we drop? M68K is often used as an example, but is actually one of the better architectures in terms of keeping up. Mips and Arm aren't widely used on the desktop, but we get a great deal of enthusiasm from embedded developers.

If we get to the point where an architecture can't pull its weight, then we'll drop it. We're not there yet.

Robinson said that the idea that dropping an architecture would benefit the release cycle "seems to meander between a vague notion and an article of faith." He also said that he has yet to see a proposal that explains how it would benefit the release cycle, and that he needs "more convincing...to support such a dramatic step. For some architectures, Debian is the only modern option for a GNU/Linux installation. It'd be a shame to give that in exchange for an unproven benefit."

Finally, we asked the candidates what the biggest challenge facing the DPL would be. Schuldei told LWN that scalability was the biggest problem facing Debian.

A lot of Debian's hottest issues over the past few years have been capacity issues: making sure the autobuilder network scales to handle our package count; making sure the NM process scales to meet the number of incoming applicants; making sure the security team scales to handle the architecture count; etc. While many of these issues are largely technical in nature, the task of identifying and resolving chokepoints before they become a problem is one that requires managerial attention, and the DPL is best suited to provide this oversight. The social structure of Debian still stems from its early years. With the size of 900+ active developers the social bonds and self-regulatory functions are just not good enough any more nowadays for it to work as smoothly and effectively as it used to be.

The changes in the leadership and small team infrastructure as well as nurturing of good working climate will address this effectively and will allow Debian a new growth cycle.

Garrett sees communication as the largest hurdle for Debian:

We're bad at it. A large part of the problem facing the release is that half the time nobody's sure why we can't release yet. People get into arguments over whether or not people are passing on enough information. It's all wasted effort, and it's all entirely unnecessary. If there's one thing that I would hope to do as DPL, it's to ensure that people know who they're supposed to be speaking to whenever they have a problem. In principle, that's not too difficult, but it's something nobody's really succeeded at yet.

Lees told LWN that Debian "basically works" and said it was difficult to sort out a minor issue to highlight as a problem. He also touched on communication as a problem, and said VoIP would be an "interesting way to improve the quality of communication...since email seems to bring out the worst in people. I would hope that improving the nature of the communication would make it easier to address other issues that arise within Debian."

Towns said that the biggest single issue was "getting Sarge out the door, but that's primarily an issue for the release team to handle." Robinson didn't respond directly to the question of the biggest challenge for Debian, but also pointed out in his responses that "the collective psyche of the project gets antsy when a release process has dragged on for too long."

The general level of irritability seems to go up. We are nearly three years pregnant with sarge, and we need to be delivering our latest offspring soon. The challenge is to practice good obstetrics, and preserve the health and well-being of ourselves and our release. In my campaigns for Debian Project Leader over the years I've consistently prescribed medicine for our ails, and I'm ready to assist my fellow developers with the delivery.

Walther also told LWN that the release cycle is the largest problem for the project.

It has caused a stagnation where we focus on putting in new packages and fixing old bugs, but the mantle of fresh new innovation that made us stand out in the early days has been passing on to other distributions. With a quicker release cycle we can definitely get that back in short order. We have all the resources and manpower.

Debian Developers may begin voting for DPL on March 21, through April 11. The voting procedure is described in section A of the Debian Constitution. We'd like to thank each of the candidates for responding to our questions, and wish them good luck in the election.

Comments (7 posted)

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Security

A hole in PaX

Security software is, as a general rule, supposed to make a system more secure. So it is always discouraging when security code, instead, opens up new holes. The PaX patches are intended to harden the Linux kernel against various sorts of attacks; its developers have, at times, been quite harsh in their criticism of security in the mainline kernel. But, as this advisory shows, the PaX code, too, is not without its troubles.

One of the techniques used by PaX is VMA mirroring. The PaX code tries to defeat various types of code injection attacks by completely separating the instruction and data areas of memory as seen by Linux processes. The idea is that, even if an attacker is able to overrun a buffer and direct the processor to execute the resulting code, the attack will be foiled by the processor's segmentation hardware. Any part of memory which can be accessed via a data pointer is simply not accessible as code.

The problem is that some code segments in an executable file contain data as well - constant strings and such. So, when an executable ELF section is mapped into the code segment, it must also be "mirrored" in the data segment. This mirroring is accomplished by creating a special sort of virtual memory area (VMA) which refers to the same physical pages and backing store as code VMA, but which resides in the data portion of the address space.

The details of the exploit have not yet been released. From a quick reading of the PaX patches before and after the fix, it would appear that the PaX code did not adequately restrict the changes user space could make to the mirrored VMAs. The resulting inconsistencies in the kernel's representation of the address space could then be exploited to run arbitrary code.

The advisory notes that this vulnerability "...pretty much destroys what PaX has always stood and been trusted for." So the author is taking his marbles and going home; PaX will be discontinued at the end of this month. Certainly, introducing an exploitable hole into a security-related patch, where it lurked for a year and a half, could harm the trust users have in that patch. But giving up and leaving those users completely unsupported into the future seems likely to cause rather more damage. Bugs happen, even in the most carefully-written code. The best thing to do is to fix them and get on with life.

Comments (5 posted)

New vulnerabilities

abuse: several vulnerabilities

Package(s):abuse CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0098 CAN-2005-0099
Created:March 7, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in abuse, the SDL port of the Abuse action game. Erik Sjölund discovered several buffer overflows in the command line handling, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code with elevated privileges since it is installed setuid root. Steve Kemp discovered that that abuse creates some files without dropping privileges first, which may lead to the creation and overwriting of arbitrary files.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-691-1 2005-03-07

Comments (none posted)

KDE dcopidlng: insecure temporary file creation

Package(s):dcopidlng CVE #(s):
Created:March 7, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: Davide Madrisan has discovered that the dcopidlng script creates temporary files in a world-writable directory with predictable names. A local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When dcopidlng is executed, this would result in the file being overwritten with the rights of the user running the utility, which could be the root user.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200503-14 2005-03-07

Comments (none posted)

hashcash: format string vulnerability

Package(s):hashcash CVE #(s):
Created:March 7, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team identified a flaw in the Hashcash utility that an attacker could expose by specifying a malformed reply address. Successful exploitation would permit an attacker to disrupt Hashcash users, and potentially execute arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200503-12 2005-03-06

Comments (none posted)

HelixPlayer: buffer overflows

Package(s):HelixPlayer CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0455 CAN-2005-0611
Created:March 3, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: The Helix Player 1.0 media player has two buffer overflows that can be exploited by playing specially crafted SMIL and WAV files. This can allow a remote attacker to execute code with the user's permissions.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:271-01 2005-03-03
Fedora FEDORA-2005-188 2005-03-03

Comments (none posted)

imagemagick: format string vulnerability

Package(s):imagemagick CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0397
Created:March 3, 2005 Updated:April 4, 2005
Description: The ImageMagick file name handling code has a format string vulnerability. Specially crafted file names can be used to crash ImageMagick and possibly execute arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:065 2005-04-01
Debian DSA-702-1 2005-04-01
Fedora FEDORA-2005-235 2005-03-30
Fedora FEDORA-2005-234 2005-03-30
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:017 2005-03-23
Red Hat RHSA-2005:320-01 2005-03-23
Gentoo 200503-11 2005-03-06
Ubuntu USN-90-1 2005-03-03

Comments (none posted)

kdenetwork: file descriptor leak

Package(s):kdenetwork CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0205
Created:March 3, 2005 Updated:March 16, 2005
Description: The kdenetwork networking applications package has a bug with the handling of privileged file descriptors in kppp. A local user can use this to modify the /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf files, allowing them to spoof domain information.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2005:934 2005-03-16
Debian DSA-692-1 2005-03-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:175-01 2005-03-03

Comments (none posted)

less: heap based buffer overflow

Package(s):less CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0086
Created:March 8, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: Victor Ashik discovered a heap based buffer overflow in less, caused by a patch added to the less package in Red Hat Linux 9. An attacker could construct a carefully crafted file that could cause less to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code when opened.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:2404 2005-03-07

Comments (none posted)

libexif: improper validation

Package(s):libexif CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0664
Created:March 7, 2005 Updated:April 15, 2005
Description: Sylvain Defresne discovered that the EXIF library did not properly validate the structure of the EXIF tags. By tricking a user to load an image with a malicious EXIF tag, an attacker could exploit this to crash the process using the library, or even execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the process.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-709-1 2005-04-15
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:064 2005-03-31
Red Hat RHSA-2005:300-01 2005-03-21
Gentoo 200503-17 2005-03-12
Fedora FEDORA-2005-200 2005-03-08
Fedora FEDORA-2005-199 2005-03-08
Ubuntu USN-91-1 2005-03-07

Comments (none posted)

libXpm: new buffer overflows

Package(s):libXpm CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0605
Created:March 4, 2005 Updated:March 8, 2006
Description: A new vulnerability has been discovered in libXpm, which is included in OpenMotif and LessTif, that can potentially lead to remote code execution.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:168264 2006-03-07
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152803 2006-01-09
Fedora FEDORA-2005-815 2005-08-26
Fedora FEDORA-2005-808 2005-08-25
Red Hat RHSA-2005:198-01 2005-06-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:473-01 2005-05-24
Red Hat RHSA-2005:412-01 2005-05-11
Debian DSA-723-1 2005-05-09
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:081 2005-05-05
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:080 2005-04-28
Red Hat RHSA-2005:044-01 2005-04-06
Red Hat RHSA-2005:331-01 2005-03-30
Fedora FEDORA-2005-273 2005-03-29
Fedora FEDORA-2005-272 2005-03-29
Ubuntu USN-97-1 2005-03-16
Gentoo 200503-15 2005-03-12
Ubuntu USN-92-1 2005-03-07
Gentoo 200503-08 2005-03-04

Comments (none posted)

mlterm: integer overflow

Package(s):mlterm CVE #(s):
Created:March 7, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: mlterm is vulnerable to an integer overflow that can be triggered by specifying a large image file as a background. This only effects users that have compiled mlterm with the 'gtk' USE flag, which enables gdk-pixbuf support.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200503-13 2005-03-07

Comments (none posted)

perl: symlink vulnerability

Package(s):perl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0448
Created:March 9, 2005 Updated:January 30, 2006
Description: The rmtree() function in the File:Path.pm module has a symlink vulnerability which could be exploited to create setuid binaries.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152845 2006-01-24
Red Hat RHSA-2005:674-01 2005-10-05
Fedora FEDORA-2005-600 2005-07-22
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:079 2005-04-28
Debian DSA-696-1 2005-03-22
Ubuntu USN-94-1 2005-03-09

Comments (none posted)

phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):phpMyAdmin CVE #(s):
Created:March 4, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: phpMyAdmin contains multiple vulnerabilities that could lead to command execution, XSS issues and bypass of security restrictions. See PMASA-2005-1 and PMASA-2005-2 for details.
Alerts:
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:007 2005-03-04
Gentoo 200503-07 2005-03-03

Comments (none posted)

RealPlayer: buffer overflows

Package(s):RealPlayer CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0455 CAN-2005-0611
Created:March 3, 2005 Updated:March 21, 2005
Description: The RealPlayer media player has two buffer overflows that can be exploited by playing specially crafted SMIL and WAV files. This can allow a remote attacker to execute code with the user's permissions.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:299-01 2005-03-21
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:014 2005-03-09
Red Hat RHSA-2005:265-01 2005-03-03

Comments (none posted)

squid: race condition

Package(s):squid CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0626
Created:March 8, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: A race condition in Squid 2.5.STABLE7 to 2.5.STABLE9, when using the Netscape Set-Cookie recommendations for handling cookies in caches, may cause Set-Cookie headers to be sent to other users, which allows attackers to steal the related cookies.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-93-1 2005-03-08

Comments (none posted)

xv: filename handling vulnerability

Package(s):xv CVE #(s):
Created:March 4, 2005 Updated:March 9, 2005
Description: Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team identified a flaw in the handling of image filenames by xv. Successful exploitation would require a victim to process a specially crafted image with a malformed filename, potentially resulting in the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200503-09 2005-03-04

Comments (none posted)

Updated vulnerabilities

a2ps: input validation error

Package(s):a2ps CVE #(s):CAN-2004-1170 CAN-2004-1377
Created:November 26, 2004 Updated:December 19, 2005
Description: The GNU a2ps utility fails to properly sanitize filenames, which can be abused by a malicious user to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user running the vulnerable application. More information at Security Focus.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152870 2005-12-17
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:097 2005-06-07
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.003 2005-01-17
Gentoo 200501-02 2005-01-04
Debian DSA-612-1 2004-12-20
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:140 2004-11-25

Comments (none posted)

bidwatcher: format string vulnerability

Package(s):bidwatcher CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0158
Created:February 18, 2005 Updated:March 3, 2005
Description: Ulf Härnhammar from the Debian Security Audit Project discovered a format string vulnerability in bidwatcher, a tool for watching and bidding on eBay auctions. This problem can be triggered remotely by a web server of eBay, or someone pretending to be eBay, sending certain data back. As of version 1.3.17 the program uses cURL and is not vulnerable anymore.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200503-06 2005-03-03
Debian DSA-687-1 2005-02-18

Comments (none posted)

bsmtpd: missing input sanitizing

Package(s):bsmtpd CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0107
Created:February 25, 2005 Updated:March 2, 2005
Description: Bastian Blank found a vulnerability in bsmtpd, a batched SMTP mailer for sendmail and postfix. Unsanitized addresses can cause the execution of arbitrary commands during alleged mail delivery.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-690-1 2005-02-25

Comments (none posted)

ClamAV: multiple issues

Package(s):clamav CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0133
Created:January 31, 2005 Updated:March 3, 2005
Description: ClamAV fails to properly scan ZIP files with special headers and base64 encoded images in URLs.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2005:928 2005-03-03
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:025 2005-01-31
Gentoo 200501-46 2005-01-31

Comments (none posted)

cmd5checkpw: local password leak

Package(s):cmd5checkpw CVE #(s):
Created:February 25, 2005 Updated:March 2, 2005
Description: Florian Westphal discovered that cmd5checkpw is installed setuid cmd5checkpw but does not drop privileges before calling execvp(), so the invoked program retains the cmd5checkpw euid. Local users that know at least one valid /etc/poppasswd user/password combination can read the /etc/poppasswd file.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200502-30 2005-02-25

Comments (none posted)

cpio - file permissions error

Package(s):cpio CVE #(s):CAN-1999-1572
Created:February 2, 2005 Updated:July 19, 2005
Description: Some versions of cpio contain an ancient vulnerability where files created by that utility have overly generous access permissions.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152891 2005-07-15
Red Hat RHSA-2005:080-01 2005-02-18
Red Hat RHSA-2005:073-01 2005-02-15
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:032-1 2005-02-11
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:032 2005-02-10
Ubuntu USN-75-1 2005-02-04
Debian DSA-664-1 2005-02-02

Comments (none posted)

cURL: buffer overflow

Package(s):curl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0490
Created:February 28, 2005 Updated:July 19, 2005
Description: Multiple stack-based buffer overflows in libcURL and cURL 7.12.1, and possibly other versions, allow remote malicious web servers to execute arbitrary code via base64 encoded replies that exceed the intended buffer lengths when decoded.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152917 2005-07-15
Fedora FEDORA-2005-325 2005-04-20
Red Hat RHSA-2005:340-01 2005-04-05
Conectiva CLA-2005:940 2005-03-21
Gentoo 200503-20 2005-03-16
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:048 2005-03-04
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:011 2005-02-28
Ubuntu USN-86-1 2005-02-28

Comments (none posted)

cyrus-imapd: buffer overflows

Package(s):cyrus-imapd CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0546
Created:February 23, 2005 Updated:April 9, 2006
Description: Cyrus-imapd, prior to version 2.2.12, contains several buffer overflows which could be exploited by an (authenticated) attacker to run code on the server system.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:156290 2006-04-04
Red Hat RHSA-2005:408-01 2005-05-17
Fedora FEDORA-2005-339 2005-04-27
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.005 2005-04-05
Conectiva CLA-2005:937 2005-03-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:051 2005-03-04
Ubuntu USN-87-1 2005-02-28
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:009 2005-02-24
Gentoo 200502-29 2005-02-23

Comments (none posted)

cyrus-sasl: remote buffer overflow

Package(s):cyrus-sasl CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0884
Created:October 7, 2004 Updated:March 16, 2005
Description: cyrus-sasl has a vulnerability involving a buffer overflow in the digestmda5.c file. A remote attacker may be able to compromise the system. Also, a local user may be able to exploit a vulnerability by using the SASL_PATH environment variable.
Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:054 2005-03-15
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:013 2005-03-03
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:2137 2005-02-17
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.004 2005-01-28
Conectiva CLA-2004:889 2004-11-11
Debian DSA-568-1 2004-10-16
Debian DSA-563-3 2004-10-14
Debian DSA-563-2 2004-10-12
Debian DSA-563-1 2004-10-12
Trustix TSLSA-2004-0053 2004-10-08
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:106 2004-10-07
Red Hat RHSA-2004:546-02 2004-10-07
Gentoo 200410-05 2004-10-07

Comments (none posted)

dhcp: format string vulnerability

Package(s):dhcp CVE #(s):CAN-2004-1006
Created:November 4, 2004 Updated:July 13, 2005
Description: Dhcp has a format string vulnerability in the log functions of dhcp 2.x that may be exploited via a malicious DNS server.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152835 2005-07-10
Red Hat RHSA-2005:212-01 2005-04-12
Debian DSA-584-1 2004-11-04

Comments (none posted)

emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"

Package(s):emacs21 CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0100
Created:February 7, 2005 Updated:May 15, 2006
Description: Max Vozeler discovered a format string vulnerability in the "movemail" utility of Emacs. By sending specially crafted packets, a malicious POP3 server could cause a buffer overflow, which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user and the "mail" group.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152898 2006-05-12
Debian DSA-685-1 2005-02-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:038 2005-02-15
Gentoo 200502-20 2005-02-15
Fedora FEDORA-2005-146 2005-02-14
Fedora FEDORA-2005-145 2005-02-14
Red Hat RHSA-2005:133-01 2005-02-15
Red Hat RHSA-2005:110-01 2005-02-15
Red Hat RHSA-2005:134-01 2005-02-10
Red Hat RHSA-2005:112-01 2005-02-10
Fedora FEDORA-2005-116 2005-02-08
Fedora FEDORA-2005-115 2005-02-08
Debian DSA-671-1 2005-02-08
Debian DSA-670-1 2005-02-08
Ubuntu USN-76-1 2005-02-07

Comments (none posted)

enscript: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):enscript CVE #(s):CAN-2004-1184 CAN-2004-1185 CAN-2004-1186
Created:January 21, 2005 Updated:May 27, 2006
Description: Erik Sjölund has discovered several security relevant problems in enscript, a program to convert ASCII text into Postscript and other formats. Unsanitized input can cause the execution of arbitrary commands via EPSF pipe support. Due to missing sanitizing of filenames it is possible that a specially crafted filename can cause arbitrary commands to be executed. Multiple buffer overflows can cause the program to crash.
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2006-0083-1 2006-05-26
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152892 2005-12-17
Red Hat RHSA-2005:040-01 2005-02-15
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:033 2005-02-10
Gentoo 200502-03 2005-02-02
Red Hat RHSA-2005:039-01 2005-02-01
Fedora FEDORA-2005-096 2005-01-31
Fedora FEDORA-2005-092 2005-01-28
Fedora FEDORA-2005-091 2005-01-28
Fedora FEDORA-2005-016 2005-01-26
Fedora FEDORA-2005-015 2005-01-26
Ubuntu USN-68-1 2005-01-24
Debian DSA-654-1 2005-01-21

Comments (none posted)

evolution: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):evolution CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0102
Created:January 24, 2005 Updated:May 19, 2005
Description: Max Vozeler discovered an integer overflow in camel-lock-helper. A user-supplied length value was not validated, so that a value of -1 caused a buffer allocation of 0 bytes; this buffer was then filled by an arbitrary amount of user-supplied data. A local attacker or a malicious POP3 server could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with root privileges (because camel-lock-helper is installed as setuid root).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:238-01 2005-05-19
Conectiva CLA-2005:925 2005-02-16
Debian DSA-673-1 2005-02-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:024 2005-01-27
Gentoo 200501-35 2005-01-24
Ubuntu USN-69-1 2005-01-24

Comments (1 posted)

f2c: insecure temp files

Package(s):f2c CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0017 CAN-2005-0018
Created:January 27, 2005 Updated:April 20, 2005
Description: The f2c fortran to C translator has a vulnerability due to insecure opening of temporary files. A local attacker can use this to launch a symlink attack.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-661-2 2005-04-20
Gentoo 200501-43 2005-01-30
Debian DSA-661-1 2005-01-27

Comments (none posted)

Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip

Package(s):foomatic CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0801
Created:September 20, 2004 Updated:May 31, 2006
Description: There is a vulnerability in the foomatic-filters package. This vulnerability is due to insufficient checking of command-line parameters and environment variables in the foomatic-rip filter. This vulnerability may allow both local and remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the print server with the permissions of the spooler.
Alerts:
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:026 2006-05-30
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:2076 2004-11-05
Conectiva CLA-2004:880 2004-10-27
Fedora FEDORA-2004-303 2004-09-21
Gentoo 200409-24 2004-09-20

Comments (none posted)

gaim: DoS issue in parsing malformed HTML

Package(s):gaim CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0208
Created:February 25, 2005 Updated:March 14, 2005
Description: Gaim has a DoS issue in parsing malformed HTML, and a MSN related crash.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2005:933 2005-03-14
Red Hat RHSA-2005:215-01 2005-03-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:049 2005-03-04
Gentoo 200503-03 2005-03-01
Fedora FEDORA-2005-172 2005-02-25
Fedora FEDORA-2005-171 2005-02-25

Comments (none posted)

gaim: client freezes

Package(s):gaim CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0472 CAN-2005-0473
Created:February 22, 2005 Updated:April 27, 2005
Description: The Gaim client freezes when receiving certain invalid messages and crashes when receiving specific malformed HTML. See this Secunia Advisory for additional information.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-716-1 2005-04-27
Ubuntu USN-85-1 2005-02-25
Fedora FEDORA-2005-160 2005-02-21
Fedora FEDORA-2005-159 2005-02-21

Comments (none posted)

gettext: Insecure temporary file handling

Package(s):gettext CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0966
Created:October 11, 2004 Updated:March 1, 2006
Description: gettext insecurely creates temporary files in world-writeable directories with predictable names. A local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When gettext is called, this would result in file access with the rights of the user running the utility, which could be the root user.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:051 2006-02-28
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:136323 2006-01-09
Gentoo 200410-10:02 2004-10-10
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2004.055 2004-12-23
Ubuntu USN-5-1 2004-10-27
Gentoo 200410-10 2004-10-10

Comments (1 posted)

gftp: missing input sanitizing

Package(s):gftp CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0372 CAN-2004-1376
Created:February 17, 2005 Updated:July 13, 2005
Description: gftp has a directory traversal vulnerability. A remote server could use specially crafted filenames to overwrite local files.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152908 2005-07-10
Red Hat RHSA-2005:410-01 2005-06-13
Fedora FEDORA-2005-310 2005-04-07
Fedora FEDORA-2005-309 2005-04-07
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:050 2005-03-04
Gentoo 200502-27 2005-02-19
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:005 2005-02-18
Debian DSA-686-1 2005-02-17

Comments (none posted)

ghostscript: symlink vulnerabilities

Package(s):ghostscript CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0967
Created:October 20, 2004 Updated:September 28, 2005
Description: The ghostscript package (prior to version 7.07.1-r7) contains several scripts which are vulnerable to symlink attacks.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:081-01 2005-09-28
Ubuntu USN-3-1 2004-10-27
Gentoo 200410-18 2004-10-20

Comments (none posted)

glibc: Information leak with LD_DEBUG

Package(s):glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2004-1453
Created:August 17, 2004 Updated:May 26, 2005
Description: Silvio Cesare discovered a potential information leak in glibc. It allows LD_DEBUG on SUID binaries where it should not be allowed. This has various security implications, which may be used to gain confidential information. An attacker can gain the list of symbols a SUID application uses and their locations and can then use a trojaned library taking precedence over those symbols to gain information or perform further exploitation.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:256-01 2005-05-18
Gentoo 200408-16 2004-08-16

Comments (1 posted)

glibc: tempfile vulnerability in catchsegv script

Package(s):glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0968
Created:October 21, 2004 Updated:November 14, 2005
Description: The catchsegv script in the glibc package has a symlink vulnerability that may allow a local user to overwrite arbitrary files with the permissions of the user that is running the script.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152848 2005-11-13
Red Hat RHSA-2005:261-01 2005-04-28
Debian DSA-636-1 2005-01-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:159 2004-12-29
Red Hat RHSA-2004:586-01 2004-12-20
Fedora FEDORA-2004-356 2004-11-11
Ubuntu USN-4-1 2004-10-27
Gentoo 200410-19 2004-10-21

Comments (none posted)

groff: insecure temporary directory

Package(s):groff CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0969
Created:November 1, 2004 Updated:February 9, 2006
Description: Recently, Trustix Secure Linux discovered a vulnerability in the groff package. The utility "groffer" created a temporary directory in an insecure way, which allowed exploitation of a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the program.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:038 2006-02-08
Gentoo 200411-15 2004-11-08
Ubuntu USN-13-1 2004-11-01

Comments (none posted)

gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash

Package(s):gtkhtml CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0133 CAN-2003-0541
Created:April 14, 2003 Updated:April 18, 2005
Description: GtkHTML is the HTML rendering widget used by the Evolution mail reader.

GtkHTML supplied with versions of Evolution prior to 1.2.4 contain a bug when handling HTML messages. Alan Cox discovered that certain malformed messages could cause the Evolution mail component to crash.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-710-1 2005-04-18
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:093 2003-09-18
Conectiva CLA-2003:737 2003-09-12
Red Hat RHSA-2003:264-01 2003-09-09
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:046 2003-04-15
Red Hat RHSA-2003:126-01 2003-04-14

Comments (none posted)

htdig: cross site scripting

Package(s):htdig CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0085
Created:February 14, 2005 Updated:January 10, 2006
Description: Michael Krax discovered that ht://Dig fails to validate the 'config' parameter before displaying an error message containing the parameter. This flaw could allow an attacker to conduct cross-site scripting attacks.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152907 2006-01-09
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:063 2005-03-31
Red Hat RHSA-2005:090-01 2005-02-15
Debian DSA-680-1 2005-02-14
Gentoo 200502-16 2005-02-13

Comments (none posted)

imagemagick: .psd image file decode vulnerability

Package(s):imagemagick CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0005
Created:January 18, 2005 Updated:March 23, 2005
Description: According to this iDEFENSE advisory, ImageMagick is vulnerable to a heap overflow when decoding .psd image files. This could be remotely exploited allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:070-01 2005-03-23
Red Hat RHSA-2005:071-01 2005-02-15
Gentoo 200501-37 2005-01-26
Gentoo 200501-26 2005-01-20
Debian DSA-646-1 2005-01-19
Ubuntu USN-62-1 2005-01-18

Comments (1 posted)

imap: buffer overflow in c-client

Package(s):imap CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0297
Created:February 18, 2005 Updated:April 9, 2006
Description: A buffer overflow flaw was found in the c-client IMAP client. An attacker could create a malicious IMAP server that if connected to by a victim could execute arbitrary code on the client machine.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:184074 2006-04-04
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152912 2005-05-12
Red Hat RHSA-2005:114-01 2005-02-18

Comments (none posted)

imlib2: buffer overflows

Package(s):imlib2 CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0802 CAN-2004-0817
Created:September 8, 2004 Updated:October 26, 2005
Description: The imlib2 library contains buffer overflows in the BMP handling code.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-548-2 2005-10-26
Conectiva CLA-2004:870 2004-09-28
Debian DSA-552-1 2004-09-22
Debian DSA-548-1 2004-09-16
Red Hat RHSA-2004:465-01 2004-09-15
Gentoo 200409-12 2004-09-08
Fedora FEDORA-2004-301 2004-09-09
Fedora FEDORA-2004-300 2004-09-09
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:089 2004-09-07

Comments (none posted)

kdelibs: unsanitzied input

Package(s):kdelibs CVE #(s):CAN-2004-1165
Created:January 10, 2005 Updated:July 19, 2005
Description: Thiago Macieira discovered a vulnerability in the kioslave library, which is part of kdelibs, which allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary FTP commands via an ftp:// URL that contains an URL-encoded newline before the FTP command.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152769 2005-07-15
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:045 2005-02-17
Red Hat RHSA-2005:065-01 2005-02-15
Red Hat RHSA-2005:009-01 2005-02-10
Fedora FEDORA-2005-064 2005-01-25
Fedora FEDORA-2005-063 2005-01-25
Gentoo 200501-18 2005-01-11
Debian DSA-631-1 2005-01-10

Comments (none posted)

libdbi-perl: insecure temporary file

Package(s):libdbi-perl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0077
Created:January 25, 2005 Updated:March 2, 2006
Description: Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña from the Debian Security Audit Project discovered that the DBI library, the Perl5 database interface, creates a temporary PID file in an insecure manner. This can be exploited by a malicious user to overwrite arbitrary files owned by the person executing the parts of the library.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:178989 2006-03-01
Gentoo 200501-38:03 2005-01-26
Red Hat RHSA-2005:072-01 2005-02-15
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:030 2005-02-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:069-01 2005-02-01
Gentoo 200501-38 2005-01-26
Ubuntu USN-70-1 2005-01-25
Debian DSA-658-1 2005-01-25

Comments (none posted)

libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling

Package(s):libgd2 CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0990 CAN-2004-0941
Created:October 29, 2004 Updated:June 28, 2006
Description: Several buffer overflows have been discovered in libgd's PNG handling functions.
If an attacker tricked a user into loading a malicious PNG image, they could leverage this into executing arbitrary code in the context of the user opening image. Most importantly, this lib