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Security

A look at NuFW

August 3, 2005

This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.

In many environments, it's sufficient to set up a firewall to filter traffic based on IP address. However, in some situations, an administrator may wish to set up a firewall that can actually filter packets based on the user, rather than the IP address that packets are coming from. A typical firewall using Netfilter is capable of filtering traffic and setting QoS rules only by the originating IP address, and doesn't recognize the concept of users at all.

Now User Filtering Works (NuFW) is a package that promises the ability to do a lot more. NuFW is a package that runs on top of Netfilter and allows packet filtering and quality of service (QoS) rules to be assigned by user or application, rather than by the machine or IP address that packets originate from. This makes it possible to apply finer-grained permissions than are possible with Netfilter alone.

There are two daemons that run to provide NuFW's services. The nuauth daemon - the authentication server for NuFW - and the nufw daemon, which runs on the firewall and works in conjunction with Netfilter to actually filter traffic. It is not necessary for the nuauth and nufw daemons to run on the same server, so an administrator can set up nufw on the firewall, and nuauth on any other machine that the firewall can communicate with.

We contacted the NuFW developers, Eric Leblond and Vincent Deffontaines about the project, and asked about the performance impact of NuFW. According to the developers, NuFW uses Netfilter's connection tracking features, and only authenticates the SYN packet of each TCP connection. This means NuFW has no impact on bandwidth, since it is removed from the equation once a connection is open.

Leblond and Deffontaines said that NuFW's impact on performance is minimal:

We also worked on the concern of performance for the SYN packets, as this is very important, too. Both daemons, nufw and nuauth, are multithreaded for max performance. We incorporated from v0.9 on an internal ACL cache into the authentication server, so it doesn't need to perform ACL checks when they were just fetched.

There remains, of course, a measurable impact on the time it takes to open TCP connections. We performed a small, basic bench, to measure this. We built a very basic process that opens a TCP connection to a host, then closes it, in loop for 1000 times. Running that process behind a NuFW firewall took 34 seconds. Running that process behind a "conventional" Netfilter firewall (same hardware) took 20 seconds. So, we're pretty happy with NuFW's behaviour on DoS conditions, and quite confident about the performance matter.

In addition to the nufw and nuauth daemons, each client system must be running the NuFW client -- Nutcpc for Linux, and NuWINc for Windows. Note that the Windows application is governed by a proprietary license, whereas NuFW is available under the GPL. Leblond and Deffontaines said that it should be easy to port the Linux client to Mac OS X and BSD OSes -- and it may run as-is. "What we mostly lack on this is testing. We are, of course, very open to contributions."

When clients send packets through the firewall or gateway, the nufw daemon checks with the nuauth daemon to authenticate the user and verify whether a particular user has the appropriate permissions to send traffic through the firewall.

NuFW distinguishes protocols as well, so users could be allowed (for example) to send HTTP traffic, but not SSH or POP3. Nuauth supports several authentication methods, including LDAP, system authentication with PAM, dbm or a plain text file with user credentials.

NuFW uses an Access Control List (ACL) to determine which services users and groups can access. In the event that two groups have conflicting permissions -- for example, if a user belongs to a group that can access SSH and a group that cannot -- NuFW can be configured to either allow access or deny it.

NuFW also offers detailed logging of activity, so that it's possible to track which users are sending traffic through the server and what traffic has been rejected or accepted. NuFW can log to syslog, or a MySQL or PostgreSQL database.

There is also a Web interface which works with NuFW called Nuface, and a firewall log analysis application called Nulog, which provides a friendly interface for viewing NuFW's logs in detail.

One limitation of NuFW is that it only filters TCP. The developers said that they want to implement UDP, ICMP and other protocols. There are a few other features that they're looking at for the long term as well:

We have to go into IPv6 support, too. We're looking for greater integration into Netfilter with NFQUEUE (yay! it will/should be in 2.6.14!) and all the current work of Netfilter's team on NETLINK, which will allow for even finer filtering. We're in contact with the Netfilter team for this.

We also asked Leblond and Deffontaines if there was any chance of NuFW being ported to any of the BSD OSes. They said that they have looked at this, but that none of the BSD IP filter packages have a feature like Netfilter's QUEUE target, which is used by NuFW. "When/if there is one, we'll be happy to port the nufw daemon to BSD. Right now, the nuauth daemon should run on BSDs, as it is POSIX C."

While NuFW provides a rich set of features, it also adds quite a bit of complexity to the setup. In addition to installing and maintaining an additional set of packages, administrators will need to set up the appropriate groups and define permissions for those groups to determine which users can utilize which services.

Admins will also need to install the NuFW client on all machines that need to authenticate with NuFW, and this means that (for the moment) NuFW is an option only for organizations that restrict their systems to Windows and Linux. It is possible to set up NuFW to ignore one or more subnets on your network, but this does defeat the purpose of using NuFW to some extent.

As Leblond and Deffontaines point out, most of the complexity "comes not from internals, but rather from the fact that NuFW is a glue between systems that don't know about each other: the firewall in the center of the network, and the user directory in the center of organisation." They are working on a "appliance" solution with NuFW that will make it easier to deploy. It's also worth noting that NuFW is now available in Debian sid and the developers say that other distributions are looking at packaging NuFW as well. This could go a long way towards making NuFW much easier to deploy.

Comments (10 posted)

New vulnerabilities

apt-cacher: remote command execution

Package(s):apt-cacher CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1854
Created:August 3, 2005 Updated:August 3, 2005
Description: The Debian apt-cacher utility has a vulnerability which can allow a remote attacker to run arbitrary code on the host system.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-772-1 2005-08-03

Comments (none posted)

epiphany: Mozilla regression vulnerability

Package(s):epiphany CVE #(s):
Created:July 28, 2005 Updated:August 29, 2005
Description: The epiphany web browser had a vulnerability regression that was caused by fixes to the Mozilla suite. This is specific to Ubuntu Linux, the Mozilla fix was: USN-155-1.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-155-2 2005-07-28

Comments (none posted)

ethereal: dissector vulnerabilities

Package(s):ethereal CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2365 CAN-2005-2367 CAN-2005-2360 CAN-2005-2361 CAN-2005-2362 CAN-2005-2363 CAN-2005-2364 CAN-2005-2366
Created:July 28, 2005 Updated:October 10, 2005
Description: The ethereal network traffic analyzer has several vulnerabilities, involving traffic dissectors. Dissectors have buffer overflows, format string overflows, and crashing/denial of service issues.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-853-1 2005-10-09
Red Hat RHSA-2005:687-01 2005-08-10
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:131 2005-08-04
Fedora FEDORA-2005-655 2005-07-29
Fedora FEDORA-2005-651 2005-07-28
Gentoo 200507-27 2005-07-28

Comments (none posted)

libgadu: memory alignment bug

Package(s):libgadu CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2370
Created:July 29, 2005 Updated:June 25, 2007
Description: Szymon Zygmunt and Michal Bartoszkiewicz discovered a memory alignment error in libgadu (from ekg, console Gadu Gadu client, an instant messaging program) which is included in gaim, a multi-protocol instant messaging client, as well. This can not be exploited on the x86 architecture but on others, e.g. on Sparc and lead to a bus error, in other words a denial of service.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-813-1 2005-09-15
Red Hat RHSA-2005:627-01 2005-08-09
Debian DSA-769-1 2005-07-29

Comments (none posted)

gopher: insecure tmpfile creation

Package(s):gopher CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1853
Created:July 29, 2005 Updated:August 3, 2005
Description: John Goerzen discovered that gopher, a client for the Gopher Distributed Hypertext protocol, creates temporary files in an insecure fashion.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-770-1 2005-07-29

Comments (none posted)

gzip: arbitrary command execution

Package(s):gzip CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0758
Created:August 1, 2005 Updated:January 9, 2007
Description: zgrep in gzip before 1.3.5 does not handle shell metacharacters like '|' and '&' properly when they occurred in input file names. This could be exploited to execute arbitrary commands with user privileges if zgrep is run in an untrusted directory with specially crafted file names.
Alerts:
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2007.002 2007-01-08
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:027 2006-01-30
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:026 2006-01-30
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:158801 2005-11-14
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157696 2005-08-10
Ubuntu USN-161-1 2005-08-04
Ubuntu USN-158-1 2005-08-01

Comments (2 posted)

libtiff: insufficient validation

Package(s):libtiff CVE #(s):
Created:July 29, 2005 Updated:August 18, 2005
Description: Wouter Hanegraaff discovered that the TIFF library did not sufficiently validate the "YCbCr subsampling" value in TIFF image headers. Decoding a malicious image with a zero value resulted in an arithmetic exception, which caused the program that uses the TIFF library to crash. This leads to a Denial of Service in server applications that use libtiff (like the CUPS printing system) and can cause data loss in, for example, the Evolution email client.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:143 2005-08-17
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:144 2005-08-18
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:142 2005-08-17
Ubuntu USN-156-1 2005-07-29

Comments (none posted)

nbSMTP: format string vulnerability

Package(s):nbsmtp CVE #(s):
Created:August 2, 2005 Updated:August 3, 2005
Description: A format string vulnerability in nbSMTP may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running nbSMTP.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200508-03 2005-08-02

Comments (none posted)

NetworkManager: format string bug in nm_info_handler

Package(s):networkmanager CVE #(s):
Created:August 1, 2005 Updated:August 3, 2005
Description: Network Manager passes logging messages straight to syslog as the format string. This causes it to crash when connecting to access points that contain format string characters. This was reported initially by Ian Jackson.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2005-680 2005-07-29

Comments (none posted)

PowerDNS: denial of service

Package(s):pdns CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2301 CAN-2005-2302
Created:August 1, 2005 Updated:August 3, 2005
Description: PowerDNS before 2.9.18 has several vulnerabilities. The LDAP backend does not properly escape all queries, allowing it to fail and not answer queries anymore. Queries from clients without recursion permission can temporarily blank out domains to clients with recursion permitted. This enables outside users to blank out a domain temporarily to normal users.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-771-1 2005-08-01

Comments (none posted)

ProFTPD: format string vulnerabilities

Package(s):proftpd CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2390
Created:August 1, 2005 Updated:September 6, 2005
Description: Multiple format string vulnerabilities in ProFTPD before 1.3.0rc2 allow attackers to cause a denial of service or obtain sensitive information via certain inputs to the shutdown message from ftpshut, or the SQLShowInfo mod_sql directive.
Alerts:
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.020 2005-09-06
Debian DSA-795-2 2005-09-02
Debian DSA-795-1 2005-09-01
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:140 2005-08-15
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0040 2005-08-05
Gentoo 200508-02 2005-08-01

Comments (none posted)

pstotext: remote execution of arbitrary code

Package(s):pstotext netpbm CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2471
Created:August 1, 2005 Updated:March 28, 2006
Description: Max Vozeler reported that pstotext calls the GhostScript interpreter on untrusted PostScript files without specifying the -dSAFER option. An attacker could craft a malicious PostScript file and entice a user to run pstotext on it, resulting in the execution of arbitrary commands with the permissions of the user running pstotext. See this Secunia advisory for more information.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1021-1 2006-03-28
Debian DSA-792-1 2005-08-31
Red Hat RHSA-2005:743-01 2005-08-22
Fedora FEDORA-2005-728 2005-08-17
Fedora FEDORA-2005-727 2005-08-17
Ubuntu USN-164-1 2005-08-11
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:133 2005-08-09
Gentoo 200508-04 2005-08-05
Gentoo 200507-29 2005-07-31

Comments (2 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)

affix: two remote vulnerabilities

Package(s):affix CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2250 CAN-2005-2277
Created:July 19, 2005 Updated:September 2, 2005
Description: A buffer overflow in the Bluetooth FTP client (BTFTP) in Nokia Affix 2.1.2 and 3.2.0 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long filename in an OBEX file share. Also remote attackers may execute arbitrary commands via shell metacharacters in the filename argument of a PUT command.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-762-1 2005-07-19

Comments (none posted)

httpd: off-by-one overflow and cross-site scripting

Package(s):apache httpd CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1268 CAN-2005-2088
Created:July 25, 2005 Updated:November 7, 2005
Description: Watchfire reported a flaw that occurred when using the Apache server as an HTTP proxy. A remote attacker could send an HTTP request with both a "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" header and a "Content-Length" header. This caused Apache to incorrectly handle and forward the body of the request in a way that the receiving server processes it as a separate HTTP request. This could allow the bypass of Web application firewall protection or lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Marc Stern reported an off-by-one overflow in the mod_ssl CRL verification callback. In order to exploit this issue the Apache server would need to be configured to use a malicious certificate revocation list (CRL).

Alerts:
Slackware SSA:2005-310-04 2005-11-07
Debian DSA-803-1 2005-09-08
Ubuntu USN-160-2 2005-09-07
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:046 2005-08-16
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157701 2005-08-10
Ubuntu USN-160-1 2005-08-04
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:130 2005-08-03
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:129 2005-08-03
Fedora FEDORA-2005-638 2005-08-02
Fedora FEDORA-2005-639 2005-08-02
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0038 2005-07-29
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:018 2005-07-28
Red Hat RHSA-2005:582-01 2005-07-25

Comments (none posted)

bzip2: race condition and infinite loop

Package(s):bzip2 CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0953 CAN-2005-1260
Created:May 17, 2005 Updated:January 10, 2007
Description: A race condition in bzip2 1.0.2 and earlier allows local users to modify permissions of arbitrary files via a hard link attack on a file while it is being decompressed, whose permissions are changed by bzip2 after the decompression is complete. Also specially crafted bzip2 archives may cause an infinite loop in the decompressor.
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2007-0004-1 2007-01-09
Debian DSA-741-1 2005-07-07
Red Hat RHSA-2005:474-01 2005-06-16
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.008 2005-06-10
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:015 2005-06-07
Debian DSA-730-1 2005-05-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:091 2005-05-18
Ubuntu USN-127-1 2005-05-17

Comments (2 posted)

ClamAntiVirus: integer overflows

Package(s):clamav CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2450
Created:July 26, 2005 Updated:August 16, 2005
Description: Clam AntiVirus versions < 0.86.2 is vulnerable to integer overflows when handling the TNEF, CHM and FSG file formats. By sending a specially-crafted file an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Clam AntiVirus.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-776-1 2005-08-16
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:125 2005-07-27
Gentoo 200507-25 2005-07-26

Comments (none posted)

cpio: directory traversal

Package(s):cpio CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1111
Created:June 20, 2005 Updated:December 26, 2005
Description: There is a vulnerability in cpio (2.6 and previous) that allows a malicious cpio file to extract to an arbitrary directory of the attackers choice. cpio will extract to the path specified in the cpio file, this path can be absolute.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:237 2005-12-23
Red Hat RHSA-2005:806-01 2005-11-10
Debian DSA-846-1 2005-10-07
Ubuntu USN-189-1 2005-09-29
Red Hat RHSA-2005:378-01 2005-07-21
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:116-1 2005-07-19
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:116 2005-07-11
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0030 2005-06-24
Gentoo 200506-16 2005-06-20

Comments (1 posted)

CUPS: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):CUPS CVE #(s):CAN-2004-2154
Created:July 14, 2005 Updated:September 20, 2005
Description: The CUPS printing system has a problem with queue name case-sensitivity matching that can cause a security policy override. An unauthorized user can use this to gain print to a protected queue.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:165 2005-09-15
Ubuntu USN-185-1 2005-09-20
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:163274 2005-09-14
Red Hat RHSA-2005:571-01 2005-07-14

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)

dbus: information disclosure

Package(s):dbus CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0201
Created:June 8, 2005 Updated:August 30, 2005
Description: From the Red Hat alert: "Dan Reed discovered that a user can send and listen to messages on another user's per-user session bus if they know the address of the socket." At current usage levels, this vulnerability is not particularly threatening.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2005-822 2005-08-29
Ubuntu USN-144-1 2005-06-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:105 2005-06-24
Red Hat RHSA-2005:102-01 2005-06-08

Comments (none posted)

dhcpcd: denial of service

Package(s):dhcpcd CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1848
Created:July 13, 2005 Updated:September 13, 2005
Description: The dhcpcd DHCP client can be tricked into reading past the end of a buffer, causing it to crash.
Alerts:
Slackware SSA:2005-255-01 2005-09-13
Red Hat RHSA-2005:603-01 2005-07-27
Gentoo 200507-16 2005-07-15
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:117 2005-07-12
Debian DSA-750-1 2005-07-11

Comments (none posted)

ekg: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):ekg CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1850 CAN-2005-1851 CAN-2005-1916
Created:July 18, 2005 Updated:August 8, 2005
Description: Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the ekg contributed scripts. These include an insecure temporary file creation problem, a potential shell command injection problem, and an arbitrary command execution problem.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-162-1 2005-08-08
Debian DSA-760-1 2005-07-18

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: message crash vulnerability

Package(s):evolution CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0806
Created:March 17, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2005
Description: The Evolution mail client can be crashed when reading certain types of messages.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-166-1 2005-08-11
Red Hat RHSA-2005:397-01 2005-05-04
Conectiva CLA-2005:950 2005-04-27
Fedora FEDORA-2005-338 2005-04-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:059 2005-03-16

Comments (none posted)

fetchmail: buffer overflow

Package(s):fetchmail CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2335
Created:July 21, 2005 Updated:August 12, 2005
Description: The fetchmail POP3 client has an arbitrary code execution vulnerability that may be triggered by a malicious POP server. See this advisory for more information.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-774-1 2005-08-12
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:126 2005-07-28
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.016 2005-07-28
Ubuntu USN-153-1 2005-07-26
Gentoo 200507-21 2005-07-25
Red Hat RHSA-2005:640-01 2005-07-25
Slackware SSA:2005-203-05 2005-07-23
Fedora FEDORA-2005-614 2005-07-21
Fedora FEDORA-2005-613 2005-07-21

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)

gdb: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):gdb CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1704 CAN-2005-1705
Created:May 20, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2006
Description: Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team discovered an integer overflow in the BFD library, resulting in a heap overflow. A review also showed that by default, gdb insecurely sources initialization files from the working directory. Successful exploitation would result in the execution of arbitrary code on loading a specially crafted object file or the execution of arbitrary commands.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0354-01 2006-08-10
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0368-01 2006-07-20
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:215 2005-11-23
Fedora FEDORA-2005-1033 2005-10-27
Fedora FEDORA-2005-1032 2005-10-27
Red Hat RHSA-2005:801-01 2005-10-18
Red Hat RHSA-2005:763-01 2005-10-11
Red Hat RHSA-2005:709-01 2005-10-05
Red Hat RHSA-2005:673-01 2005-10-05
Red Hat RHSA-2005:659-01 2005-09-28
Fedora FEDORA-2005-498 2005-06-29
Fedora FEDORA-2005-497 2005-06-29
Gentoo 200506-01 2005-06-01
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0025 2005-05-31
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:095 2005-05-30
Ubuntu USN-136-2 2005-05-27
Ubuntu USN-136-1 2005-05-27
Ubuntu USN-135-1 2005-05-27
Gentoo 200505-15 2005-05-20

Comments (5 posted)

gtk-pixbuf, gtk2: denial of service

Package(s):gdk-pixbuf gtk2 CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0891
Created:March 30, 2005 Updated:December 19, 2005
Description: The BMP image processing code in gdk-pixbuf and gtk2 contains a denial of service vulnerability exploitable via a specially crafted image file.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:155510 2005-12-17
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:154272 2005-07-15
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:010 2005-04-08
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:069 2005-04-07
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:068 2005-04-07
Ubuntu USN-108-1 2005-04-05
Red Hat RHSA-2005:343-01 2005-04-05
Red Hat RHSA-2005:344-01 2005-04-01
Fedora FEDORA-2005-268 2005-03-30
Fedora FEDORA-2005-267 2005-03-30
Fedora FEDORA-2005-266 2005-03-30
Fedora FEDORA-2005-265 2005-03-30

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)

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: 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)

gnupg: information leak

Package(s):gnupg CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0366
Created:March 16, 2005 Updated:August 19, 2005
Description: GnuPG (and other PGP-like systems) suffers from an information leak which could, in some situations, be used by an attacker to obtain plain text from an encrypted message. See this message for a detailed explanation of the problem. "We know of no real-world application that is affected by this type of attack. It is an attack that requires the active participation of someone who holds the actual key required to decrypt a message. Thus, it is not something you are likely to see."
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-170-1 2005-08-19
Gentoo 200503-29 2005-03-24
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:057 2005-03-15

Comments (none posted)

grip: buffer overflow

Package(s):grip CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0706
Created:March 10, 2005 Updated:September 16, 2005
Description: Grip, a CD ripper, has a buffer overflow vulnerability that can occur when the CDDB server returns more than 16 matches.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152919 2005-09-15
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:074 2005-04-20
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:075 2005-04-20
Gentoo 200504-07 2005-04-08
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:066 2005-04-01
Red Hat RHSA-2005:304-01 2005-03-28
Gentoo 200503-21 2005-03-17
Fedora FEDORA-2005-203 2005-03-09
Fedora FEDORA-2005-202 2005-03-09

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)

heartbeat: insecure temporary files

Package(s):heartbeat CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2231
Created:July 19, 2005 Updated:August 15, 2005
Description: Eric Romang discovered several insecure temporary file creations in the High Availability Linux Project Heartbeat 1.2.3.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-761-2 2005-08-15
Ubuntu USN-165-1 2005-08-11
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:132 2005-08-09
Gentoo 200508-05 2005-08-07
Debian DSA-761-1 2005-07-19

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)

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)

infozip: privilege escalation, directory-traversal

Package(s):infozip CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0282 CAN-2004-1010 CAN-2005-0602
Created:May 2, 2005 Updated:August 1, 2005
Description: InfoZip reports that Zip 2.3 and (presumably) all previous versions have a buffer-overrun vulnerability relating to deep directory paths that could potentially lead to local privilege escalation (e.g., in the case of automated, Zip-based backups). All versions of UnZip through 5.50 have a number of directory-traversal vulnerabilities.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-159-1 2005-08-01
Slackware SSA:2005-121-01 2005-05-02

Comments (1 posted)

junkbuster: heap corruption and settings modification

Package(s):junkbuster CVE #(s):CVE-2005-1108 CVE-2005-1109
Created:April 13, 2005 Updated:November 5, 2005
Description: JunkBuster through version 2.02-r2 contains two vulnerabilities: a heap corruption bug and a possible privacy violation.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-713-1 2005-04-21
Gentoo 200504-11 2005-04-13

Comments (1 posted)

kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak

Package(s):kdelibs kate kwrite CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1920
Created:July 19, 2005 Updated:November 27, 2006
Description: Kate / Kwrite, as shipped with KDE 3.2.x up to including 3.4.0, creates a file backup before saving a modified file. These backup files are created with default permissions, even if the original file had more strict permissions set. See this advisory for more information.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200611-21 2006-11-27
Debian DSA-804-2 2005-11-10
Debian DSA-804-1 2005-09-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:612-01 2005-07-27
Ubuntu USN-150-1 2005-07-21
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:122 2005-07-20
Fedora FEDORA-2005-594 2005-07-19

Comments (none posted)

kernel: ELF loader core dump vulnerability

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1263
Created:May 11, 2005 Updated:August 25, 2005
Description: Paul Starzetz has posted an advisory for yet another kernel vulnerability. In this case, by using a specially manipulated ELF binary, a local attacker can compromise the system (via the core dump code) and obtain root access. This vulnerability affects all kernels from 2.2 through 2.6.12-rc4.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:529-01 2005-08-25
Red Hat RHSA-2005:420-01 2005-06-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:472-01 2005-05-25
Fedora FEDORA-2005-392 2005-05-23
Ubuntu USN-131-1 2005-05-23
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0022 2005-05-13

Comments (none posted)

kernel: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1913 CAN-2005-1761
Created:July 1, 2005 Updated:September 9, 2005
Description: Several vulnerabilities in the 2.6 kernel have been fixed, including a subthread exec problem (CAN-2005-1913) and a ia64 ptrace + sigrestore_context problem (CAN-2005-1761).
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-178-1 2005-09-09
Red Hat RHSA-2005:551-01 2005-08-25
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:044 2005-08-04
Fedora FEDORA-2005-510 2005-07-01

Comments (1 posted)

kernel: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0449 CAN-2005-0209 CAN-2005-0529 CAN-2005-0530 CAN-2005-0532 CAN-2005-0384 CAN-2005-0210 CAN-2005-0504 CAN-2005-0003
Created:March 24, 2005 Updated:May 31, 2006
Description: A number of vulnerabilities have been found in the Linux kernel, including a PPP-related denial of service problem, an integer overflow in the epoll() code, memory corruption in the ELF loader, and exploitable overflows in the ISO9660 code.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1082-1 2006-05-29
Debian DSA-1069-1 2006-05-20
Debian DSA-1070-1 2006-05-21
Debian DSA-1067-1 2006-05-20
Conectiva CLA-2005:945 2005-03-31
Fedora FEDORA-2005-262 2005-03-28
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:018 2005-03-24

Comments (none posted)

krb5: double-free flaw

Package(s):krb5 CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0175 CAN-2005-0488 CAN-2005-1175 CAN-2005-1689
Created:July 12, 2005 Updated:December 6, 2005
Description: The krb5 authentication has a double-free flaw which may be initiated by a remote unauthenticated attacker. Also, a single byte heap overflow in the krb5_unparse_name() function can lead to a denial of service and an information disclosure may be caused by a malicious telnet server. See This report for more information.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-224-1 2005-12-06
Debian DSA-757-1 2005-07-17
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0036 2005-07-14
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:119 2005-07-13
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:017 2005-07-13
Gentoo 200507-11 2005-07-12
Fedora FEDORA-2005-553 2005-07-12
Red Hat RHSA-2005:562-01 2005-07-12
Fedora FEDORA-2005-552 2005-07-12
Red Hat RHSA-2005:567-02 2005-07-12

Comments (none posted)

libconvert-uulib-perl: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):libconvert-uulib-perl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1349
Created:May 20, 2005 Updated:January 27, 2006
Description: Mark Martinec and Robert Lewis discovered a buffer overflow in Convert::UUlib (before 1.051), a Perl interface to the uulib library, which may result in the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:022 2006-01-26
Debian DSA-727-1 2005-05-20

Comments (1 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)

libgadu: integer overflows

Package(s):libgadu CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1852
Created:July 22, 2005 Updated:July 27, 2005
Description: libgadu, a library implementing the Gadu messaging protocol, suffers from a set of integer overflow vulnerabilities. This vulnerability affects a number of other packages; see, for example, this KDE advisory for kdenetwork and Kopete.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200507-26 2005-07-27
Debian DSA-767-1 2005-07-27
Gentoo 200507-23 2005-07-25
Slackware SSA:2005-203-02 2005-07-22
Fedora FEDORA-2005-623 2005-07-22
Fedora FEDORA-2005-624 2005-07-22
Red Hat RHSA-2005:639-01 2005-07-21

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 library is commonly used in PHP. One possible target would be a PHP driven photo website that lets users upload images. Therefore this vulnerability might lead to privilege escalation to a web server's privileges.
Multiple buffer overflows in the gd graphics library (libgd) 2.0.21 and earlier may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via malformed image files that trigger the overflows due to improper calls to the gdMalloc function.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:114 2006-06-27
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0194-01 2006-02-01
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152838 2005-07-15
Red Hat RHSA-2004:638-01 2004-12-17
Ubuntu USN-33-1 2004-11-29
Debian DSA-602-1 2004-11-29
Debian DSA-601-1 2004-11-29
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:132 2004-11-15
Ubuntu USN-25-1 2004-11-15
Fedora FEDORA-2004-412 2004-11-11
Fedora FEDORA-2004-411 2004-11-11
Ubuntu USN-21-1 2004-11-09
Debian DSA-591-1 2004-11-09
Debian DSA-589-1 2004-11-09
Gentoo 200411-08 2004-11-03
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2004.049 2004-10-30
Ubuntu USN-11-1 2004-10-28

Comments (none posted)

libnet-ssleay-perl: weakened cryptographic operations

Package(s):libnet-ssleay-perl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0106
Created:May 3, 2005 Updated:January 27, 2006
Description: Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pena discovered that this library used the file /tmp/entropy as a fallback entropy source if a proper source was not set in the environment variable EGD_PATH. This can potentially lead to weakened cryptographic operations if an attacker provides a /tmp/entropy file with known content.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:023 2006-01-26
Ubuntu USN-113-1 2005-05-03

Comments (none posted)

libTIFF: buffer overflow

Package(s):libtiff CVE #(s):CAN-2005-1544
Created:May 10, 2005 Updated:February 17, 2006
Description: Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team discovered a stack based buffer overflow in the libTIFF library when reading a TIFF image with a malformed BitsPerSample tag. Successful exploitation would require the victim to open a specially crafted TIFF image, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:042 2006-02-17
Debian DSA-755-1 2005-07-13
Ubuntu USN-130-1 2005-05-19
Gentoo 200505-07 2005-05-10

Comments (1 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: