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.desktop files and security

One of the areas of quiet cooperation between the GNOME and KDE projects is the shared specification for .desktop files. These files create a connection between an icon on the desktop and an application to be launched or file to be accessed when the icon is clicked upon by the user. The format is simple and flexible, and it allows the same desktop icons to be implemented on either desktop system.

There is been an ongoing level of concern over these files, most recently voiced by Sam Watkins on the XDG mailing list. The issue that that .desktop files are, for all practical purposes, shell scripts capable of doing anything that the user can do. But they do not have to be marked as executable, and they have complete control over how they are presented on the desktop. A .desktop file can show up as a document or image file, but actually be some sort of hostile script. A user, hoping only to view a file which has shown up on the desktop, may end up running something entirely different.

A number of ways of addressing the issue have been proposed. The simplest, perhaps, is to require that .desktop files have execute permission to be launched. Since setting that bit requires an explicit action on the part of the user, a hostile icon cannot be put directly onto the desktop by, for example, a file downloaded via a web browser. Some people have objected that .desktop files are not actually executables - they cannot be run from the command line. Putting a suitable #! line at the beginning of the file would fix that, however.

Another possibility would be to mark known-good .desktop files with an extended attribute. If an attempt was made to launch an unmarked file, a suitably scary dialog would be put up and confirmation required from the user. Or, .desktop files with executable content could be restricted in the set of icons they could use, so that, at least, the fact that a program would be run would be obvious. Or some sort of global system database could keep track of the trusted .desktop files.

Perhaps the most elaborate suggestion is to run all .desktop programs (and perhaps others) in a tightly-restricted sandbox with little access to the rest of the system. With some work, the desktop environment could be reworked to make most things work transparently for users. For example, selecting a file in a file-browser dialog would grant the right to access that file to the associated application. The Plash project has made progress toward the implementation of such a system.

Which of these solutions will be adopted, if any, remains to be seen. It is not clear that everybody sees a real problem with the capabilities of .desktop files. Experience has shown, however, that even difficult and unlikely attack vectors will be exploited eventually. It would be a shame if the adoption of desktop Linux were to be held back by security concerns.

Comments (22 posted)

Security news

Coverity: one bug fixed every six minutes

Coverity has sent out a press release claiming that free software projects fixed one bug every six minutes in the week following the release of the results from the company's first scan. "In seven days, the defect density for 32 open source projects analyzed dropped from 0.434 defects per thousand lines of code to 0.371 defects. Samba, a widely used open source project used to connect Linux and Windows networks, showed the fastest developer response, reducing software defects in Samba from 216 to 18 in the first seven days."

Comments (33 posted)

New vulnerabilities

dia: buffer overflows

Package(s):dia CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1550
Created:April 3, 2006 Updated:May 3, 2006
Description: Three buffer overflows were discovered in the Xfig file format importer. By tricking a user into opening a specially crafted .fig file with dia, an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the user's privileges.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0280-01 2006-05-03
Gentoo 200604-14 2006-04-23
Fedora FEDORA-2006-261 2006-04-05
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:062 2006-04-03
Ubuntu USN-266-1 2006-04-03

Comments (none posted)

horde: two remotely exploitable vulnerabilities

Package(s):horde CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1491 CVE-2006-1260
Created:April 5, 2006 Updated:April 14, 2006
Description: Versions of horde prior to 3.1.1 have two vulnerabilities, both of which are remotely exploitable: code execution in the help viewer and an input validation error which could allow read access to arbitrary files.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1034-1 2006-04-14
Debian DSA-1033-1 2006-04-12
Gentoo 200604-02 2006-04-04

Comments (none posted)

kaffeine: buffer overflow

Package(s):kaffeine CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0051
Created:April 5, 2006 Updated:April 6, 2006
Description: Marcus Meissner discovered that kaffeine, a media player for KDE 3, contains an unchecked buffer that can be overwritten remotely when fetching remote RAM playlists which can cause the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-268-1 2006-04-06
Gentoo 200604-04 2006-04-05
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:065 2006-04-05
Debian DSA-1023-1 2006-04-05

Comments (none posted)

mailman: denial of service

Package(s):mailman CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0052
Created:March 30, 2006 Updated:June 9, 2006
Description: Mailman 2.1.5 and below have a denial of service vulnerability in the Scrubber.py script. If a maliciously created message with a mime multi part format is received, mailman delivery can be stopped.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0486-01 2006-06-09
SuSE SUSE-SR:2006:008 2006-04-07
Debian DSA-1027-1 2006-04-06
Ubuntu USN-267-1 2006-04-03
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:061 2006-03-29

Comments (none posted)

mediawiki: cross-site scripting

Package(s):mediawiki CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1498
Created:April 4, 2006 Updated:April 4, 2006
Description: MediaWiki fails to decode certain encoded URLs correctly. By supplying specially crafted links, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to inject malicious HTML or JavaScript code that will be executed in a user's browser session in the context of the vulnerable site.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200604-01 2006-04-04

Comments (none posted)

MySQL: logging bypass

Package(s):mysql CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0903
Created:April 4, 2006 Updated:May 21, 2008
Description: MySQL 5.0.18 and earlier allows local users to bypass logging mechanisms via SQL queries that contain the NULL character, which are not properly handled by the mysql_real_query function. NOTE: this issue was originally reported for the mysql_query function, but the vendor states that since mysql_query expects a null character, this is not an issue for mysql_query.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2008:0364-01 2008-05-21
Ubuntu USN-274-2 2006-05-15
Ubuntu USN-274-1 2006-04-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:064 2006-04-03

Comments (2 posted)

php: insecure data

Package(s):php CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1490
Created:April 4, 2006 Updated:April 4, 2006
Description: A vulnerability was discovered where the html_entity_decode() function would return a chunk of memory with length equal to the string supplied, which could include php code, php ini data, other user data, etc.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:063 2006-04-02

Comments (none posted)

samba: clear text password exposure

Package(s):samba CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1059
Created:March 31, 2006 Updated:April 4, 2006
Description: According to this Samba advisory the winbindd daemon included in Samba 3.0.21 and subsequent patch releases (3.0.21a-c) writes the clear text of server's machine credentials to its log file at level 5. The winbindd log files are world readable by default and often log files are requested on open mailing lists as tools used to debug server misconfigurations. This vulnerability has been fixed in Samba 3.0.22.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2006-259 2006-03-30

Comments (none posted)

storebackup: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):storebackup CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3146 CVE-2005-3147 CVE-2005-3148
Created:April 4, 2006 Updated:April 4, 2006
Description: Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the backup utility storebackup.
  • Storebackup creates a temporary file predictably, which can be exploited to overwrite arbitrary files on the system with a symlink attack. (CVE-2005-3146)
  • The backup root directory is created with world-readable permissions, which may leak sensitive data. (CVE-2005-3147)
  • The user and group rights of symlinks are set incorrectly when making or restoring a backup, which may leak sensitive data. (CVE-2005-3148)
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1022-1 2006-04-04

Comments (none posted)

Updated vulnerabilities

ADOdb: PostgresSQL command injection

Package(s):adodb CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0410
Created:February 6, 2006 Updated:April 17, 2006
Description: Andy Staudacher discovered that ADOdb does not properly sanitize all parameters. By sending specifically crafted requests to an application that uses ADOdb and a PostgreSQL backend, an attacker might exploit the flaw to execute arbitrary SQL queries on the host.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200604-07 2006-04-14
Debian DSA-1031-1 2006-04-08
Debian DSA-1030-1 2006-04-08
Debian DSA-1029-1 2006-04-08
Gentoo 200602-02 2006-02-06

Comments (none posted)

apache: cross-site scripting

Package(s):apache CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3352
Created:December 14, 2005 Updated:May 10, 2006
Description: Versions 1 and 2 of the apache web server suffer from a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the mod_imap module; see this bugzilla entry for details.
Alerts:
Slackware SSA:2006-129-01 2006-05-10
SuSE SUSE-SR:2006:004 2006-02-24
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:175406 2006-02-18
Gentoo 200602-03 2006-02-06
Fedora FEDORA-2006-052 2006-01-20
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0158-01 2006-01-17
Ubuntu USN-241-1 2006-01-12
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0074 2005-12-23
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:007 2006-01-05
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0159-01 2006-01-05
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2005.029 2005-12-14

Comments (none posted)

blender: integer overflow

Package(s):blender CVE #(s):CVE-2005-4470
Created:January 6, 2006 Updated:June 15, 2006
Description: Damian Put discovered that Blender did not properly validate a 'length' value in .blend files. Negative values led to an insufficiently sized memory allocation. By tricking a user into opening a specially crafted .blend file, this could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the Blender user.
Alerts:
Debian-Testing DTSA-29-1 2006-06-15
Debian DSA-1039-1 2006-04-24
Gentoo 200601-08 2006-01-13
Ubuntu USN-238-2 2006-01-06
Ubuntu USN-238-1 2006-01-06

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)

cairo: denial of service

Package(s):cairo CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0528
Created:March 21, 2006 Updated:March 31, 2006
Description: The cairo library (libcairo), as used in GNOME Evolution and possibly other products, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (persistent client crash) via an attached text file that contains "Content-Disposition: inline" in the header, and a very long line in the body, which causes the client to repeatedly crash until the e-mail message is manually removed, possibly due to a buffer overflow, as demonstrated using an XML attachment.
Alerts:
SuSE SUSE-SR:2006:007 2006-03-31
Ubuntu USN-265-1 2006-03-23
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:057 2006-03-20

Comments (none posted)

ktools: buffer overflow

Package(s):centericq CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3863
Created:December 7, 2005 Updated:August 29, 2006
Description: From the Debian-Testing alert: Mehdi Oudad "deepfear" and Kevin Fernandez "Siegfried" from the Zone-H Research Team discovered a buffer overflow in kkstrtext.h of the ktools library, which is included in (at least) centericq and motor.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200608-27 2006-08-29
Debian DSA-1088-1 2006-06-03
Debian DSA-1083-1 2006-05-31
Gentoo 200512-11 2005-12-20
Debian-Testing DTSA-23-1 2005-12-05

Comments (none posted)

cpio: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):cpio CVE #(s):CVE-2005-4268
Created:January 2, 2006 Updated:May 8, 2007
Description: Richard Harms discovered that cpio did not sufficiently validate file properties when creating archives. Files with e. g. a very large size caused a buffer overflow. By tricking a user or an automatic backup system into putting a specially crafted file into a cpio archive, a local attacker could probably exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the target user (which is likely root in an automatic backup system).
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2007-0094-1 2007-05-07
Red Hat RHSA-2007:0245-02 2007-05-01
Ubuntu USN-234-1 2006-01-02

Comments (none posted)

crossfire: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):crossfire CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1010
Created:March 14, 2006 Updated:April 24, 2006
Description: It was discovered that Crossfire, a multiplayer adventure game, performs insufficient bounds checking on network packets when run in "oldsocketmode", which may possibly lead to the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200604-11 2006-04-22
Debian DSA-1001-1 2006-03-14

Comments (none posted)

curl: heap-based buffer overflow

Package(s):curl CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1061
Created:March 21, 2006 Updated:June 28, 2006
Description: Heap-based buffer overflow in cURL and libcURL 7.15.0 through 7.15.2 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands via a TFTP URL (tftp://) with a valid hostname and a long path.
Alerts:
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2006.012 2006-06-28
Trustix TSLSA-2006-0016 2006-03-24
Gentoo 200603-19 2006-03-21
Fedora FEDORA-2006-189 2006-03-21

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)

dia: missing input sanitizing

Package(s):dia CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2966
Created:October 4, 2005 Updated:April 6, 2006
Description: Joxean Koret discovered that the SVG import plugin did not properly sanitize data read from an SVG file. By tricking an user into opening a specially crafted SVG file, an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1025-1 2006-04-06
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:187 2005-10-20
Gentoo 200510-06 2005-10-06
Debian DSA-847-1 2005-10-08
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:022 2005-10-07
Ubuntu USN-193-1 2005-10-04

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)

fetchmail: multidrop bug

Package(s):fetchmail CVE #(s):CVE-2005-4348
Created:December 20, 2005 Updated:May 27, 2006
Description: Fetchmail contains a bug which allows a malicious mail server to crash the client by sending a message without headers. This occurs when running in multidrop mode.
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2006-0084-1 2006-05-26
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:164512 2006-05-12
Slackware SSA:2006-045-01 2006-02-15
Debian DSA-939-1 2006-01-13
Ubuntu USN-233-1 2006-01-02
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:236 2005-12-23
Fedora FEDORA-2005-1187 2005-12-20
Fedora FEDORA-2005-1186 2005-12-20

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)

freeradius: authentication bypass

Package(s):freeradius CVE #(s):CVE-2006-1354
Created:March 24, 2006 Updated:June 5, 2006
Description: An unspecified vulnerability in FreeRADIUS 1.0.0 up to 1.1.0 allows remote attackers to bypass authentication or cause a denial of service (server crash) via "Insufficient input validation" in the EAP-MSCHAPv2 state machine module.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1089-1 2006-06-03
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:066 2006-04-05
Gentoo 200604-03 2006-04-04
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0271-01 2006-04-04
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:019 2006-03-28
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:060 2006-03-23

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)

gnupg: incorrect signature verification

Package(s):gnupg CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0049
Created:March 13, 2006 Updated:May 15, 2006
Description: Another vulnerability has been found in GnuPG. "Signature verification of non-detached signatures may give a positive result but when extracting the signed data, this data may be prepended or appended with extra data not covered by the signature. Thus it is possible for an attacker to take any signed message and inject extra arbitrary data."
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:185355 2006-05-12
Trustix TSLSA-2006-0014 2006-03-20
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0266-01 2006-03-15
Slackware SSA:2006-072-02 2006-03-14
Fedora FEDORA-2006-147 2006-03-13
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:055 2006-03-13
Ubuntu USN-264-1 2006-03-13
Debian DSA-993-2 2006-03-13
Gentoo 200603-08 2006-03-10
Debian DSA-993-1 2006-03-10

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)

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)

ipsec-tools: denial of service

Package(s):ipsec-tools CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3732
Created:December 1, 2005 Updated:June 8, 2006
Description: ipsec-tools has a remote denial of service vulnerability in the racoon daemon. If racoon is running in aggressive mode, it fails to check all peer payloads during When the daemon the IKE negotiation phase, allowing a malicious peer to crash the daemon. One should always be careful around aggressive racoons.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:190941 2006-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0267-01 2006-04-25
Debian DSA-965-1 2006-02-06
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:020 2006-01-25
SuSE SUSE-SA:2005:070 2005-12-20
Gentoo 200512-04 2005-12-12
Ubuntu USN-221-1 2005-12-01

Comments (none posted)

kdebase: local root vulnerability

Package(s):kdebase CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2494
Created:September 7, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2006
Description: The kdebase package (and kcheckpass in particular) found in KDE versions 3.2.0 through 3.4.2 suffers from a lock file handling error which can enable a local attacker to obtain root access. See this advisory for details.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0582-01 2006-08-10
Debian DSA-815-1 2005-09-16
Slackware SSA:2005-251-01 2005-09-09
Ubuntu USN-176-1 2005-09-07
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:160 2005-09-06

Comments (none 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: 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)

kernel multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3527 CVE-2005-3783 CVE-2005-3784 CVE-2005-3805 CVE-2005-3806 CVE-2005-3808
Created:January 20, 2006 Updated:April 18, 2006
Description: Here's another set of vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel:
  • A race condition in the 2.6 kernel could allow a local user to cause a DoS by triggering a core dump in one thread while another thread has a pending SIGSTOP (CVE-2005-3527).
  • The ptrace functionality in 2.6 kernels prior to 2.6.14.2, using CLONE_THREAD, does not use the thread group ID to check whether it is attaching to itself, which could allow local users to cause a DoS (CVE-2005-3783).
  • The auto-reap child process in 2.6 kernels prior to 2.6.15 include processes with ptrace attached, which leads to a dangling ptrace reference and allows local users to cause a crash (CVE-2005-3784).
  • A locking problem in the POSIX timer cleanup handling on exit on kernels 2.6.10 to 2.6.14 when running on SMP systems, allows a local user to cause a deadlock involving process CPU timers (CVE-2005-3805).
  • The IPv6 flowlabel handling code in 2.4 and 2.6 kernels prior to 2.4.32 and 2.6.14 modifies the wrong variable in certain circumstances, which allows local users to corrupt kernel memory or cause a crash by triggering a free of non-allocated memory (CVE-2005-3806).
  • An integer overflow in 2.6.14 and earlier could allow a local user to cause a hang via 64-bit mmap calls that are not properly handled on a 32-bit system (CVE-2005-3808).
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:072 2006-04-17
Debian DSA-1018-2 2006-04-05
Debian DSA-1018-1 2006-03-26
Debian DSA-1017-1 2006-03-23
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157459-2 2006-03-16
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157459-1 2006-03-16
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157459-4 2006-03-16
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:157459-3 2006-03-16
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:012 2006-02-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:044 2006-02-21
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0191-01 2006-02-01
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:018 2006-01-20

Comments (none posted)

libapreq2: algorithm weakness

Package(s):libapreq2-perl apache2 CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0042
Created:March 14, 2006 Updated:April 18, 2006
Description: An algorithm weakness has been discovered in Apache2::Request, the generic request library for Apache2 which can be exploited remotely and cause a denial of service via CPU consumption.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200604-08 2006-04-17
Debian DSA-1000-2 2006-04-03
Debian DSA-1000-1 2006-03-14

Comments (5 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)

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)

libpam-ldap: authentication bypass

Package(s):libpam-ldap CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2641
Created:August 25, 2005 Updated:October 6, 2006
Description: libpam-ldap, the PAM LDAP interface, has a vulnerability in which it fails to authenticate with an LDAP server which is not configured properly, allowing an authentication bypass.
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2006-0183-1 2006-10-05
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:190 2005-10-20
Gentoo 200508-22 2005-08-31
Debian DSA-785-1 2005-08-25

Comments (none posted)

mod_python: remote access vulnerability

Package(s):mod_python CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0088
Created:February 10, 2005 Updated:April 9, 2006
Description: mod_python has a vulnerability in the publisher handler that may allow a remote user to use a specially crafted URL to allow access to objects that should be protected. An information leak can result.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152896 2006-04-04
Conectiva CLA-2005:926 2005-03-02
Debian DSA-689-1 2005-02-23
Red Hat RHSA-2005:100-01 2005-02-15
Gentoo 200502-14 2005-02-13
Trustix TSLSA-2005-0003 2005-02-11
Ubuntu USN-80-1 2005-02-11
Red Hat RHSA-2005:104-01 2005-02-10
Fedora FEDORA-2005-140 2005-02-10
Fedora FEDORA-2005-139 2005-02-10

Comments (none posted)

mozilla: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):mozilla CVE #(s):CVE-2005-4134 CVE-2006-0292 CVE-2006-0296
Created:February 2, 2006 Updated:May 4, 2006
Description: Mozilla has three new vulnerabilities. The Javascript interpreter has a problem with dereferencing objects. A user can visit a specially crafted web page which can crash the browser or cause it to execute arbitrary code.

The XULDocument.persist() function has a bug that can be triggered by viewing specially crafted web sites, RDF data can be injected into the localstore.rdf file, allowing arbitrary javascript code to be executed.

The Mozilla history saving mechanism is vulnerable to a denial of service attack, visiting sites with extra-long titles can cause a crash or very slow startup the next time the browser is run.

Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-275-1 2006-04-27
Debian DSA-1046-1 2006-04-27
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:180036 2006-02-23
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:037 2006-02-07
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:036 2006-02-07
Fedora FEDORA-2006-076 2006-02-02
Fedora FEDORA-2006-075 2006-02-02
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0200-01 2006-02-02
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0199-01 2006-02-02

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla Thunderbird: remote code execution and DoS

Package(s):mozilla-thunderbird CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0884
Created:March 3, 2006 Updated:May 4, 2006
Description: The WYSIWYG rendering engine in Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 and earlier allows user-complicit attackers to bypass javascript security settings and obtain sensitive information or cause a crash via an e-mail containing a javascript URI in the SRC attribute of an IFRAME tag, which is executed when the user edits the e-mail.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1051-1 2006-05-04
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:052 2006-03-02

Comments (1 posted)

ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):ncpfs CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0013 CAN-2005-0014
Created:January 31, 2005 Updated:May 15, 2006
Description: Erik Sjolund discovered two vulnerabilities in the programs bundled with ncpfs: there is a potentially exploitable buffer overflow in ncplogin (CAN-2005-0014), and due to a flaw in nwclient.c, utilities using the NetWare client functions insecurely access files with elevated privileges (CAN-2005-0013).
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:152904 2006-05-12
Fedora FEDORA-2005-435 2005-08-16
Red Hat RHSA-2005:371-01 2005-05-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:028 2005-02-01
Gentoo 200501-44 2005-01-30

Comments (none posted)

ntp: uses wrong gid

Package(s):ntp CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2496
Created:August 26, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2006
Description: When starting xntpd with the -u option and specifying the group by using a string not a numeric gid the daemon uses the gid of the user not the group. This problem is now fixed by this update.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0393-01 2006-08-10
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:156 2005-09-06
Debian DSA-801-1 2005-09-05
Ubuntu USN-175-1 2005-09-01
Fedora FEDORA-2005-812 2005-08-26

Comments (none posted)

openmotif: buffer overflows

Package(s):openmotif CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3964
Created:December 29, 2005 Updated:July 27, 2006
Description: The libUil component of the OpenMotif toolkit has a pair of buffer overflow vulnerabilities that can possibly be used for the execution of arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2006-854 2006-07-26
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0272-01 2006-04-04
Gentoo 200512-16 2005-12-28

Comments (none posted)

OpenSSH: double shell expansion

Package(s):openssh CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0225
Created:January 23, 2006 Updated:July 20, 2006
Description: OpenSSH has a double shell expansion vulnerability in local to local and remote to remote copy with scp.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0298-01 2006-07-20
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0044-01 2006-03-07
Ubuntu USN-255-1 2006-02-21
Gentoo 200602-11 2006-02-20
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:168935 2006-02-18
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2006.003 2006-02-18
Slackware SSA:2006-045-06 2006-02-15
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:008 2006-02-14
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:034 2006-02-06
Fedora FEDORA-2006-056 2006-01-23

Comments (none posted)

perl: setuid vulnerabilities

Package(s):perl CVE #(s):CAN-2005-0155 CAN-2005-0156
Created:February 2, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2006
Description: There are two vulnerabilities with perl when it is used in a setuid mode. The PERLIO_DEBUG environment variable can be used to overwrite arbitrary files; there is also an associated buffer overflow which can be exploited to gain root access.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0605-01 2006-08-10
Fedora FEDORA-2005-353 2005-05-02
Red Hat RHSA-2005:103-01 2005-02-15
Gentoo 200502-13 2005-02-11
SuSE SUSE-SR:2005:004 2005-02-11
Mandrake MDKSA-2005:031 2005-02-08
Red Hat RHSA-2005:105-01 2005-02-07
Ubuntu USN-72-1 2005-02-02

Comments (none posted)

phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):phpbb2 CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3310 CVE-2005-3415 CVE-2005-3416 CVE-2005-3417 CVE-2005-3418 CVE-2005-3419 CVE-2005-3420 CVE-2005-3536 CVE-2005-3537
Created:December 22, 2005 Updated:February 11, 2008
Description: The phpbb2 web forum has a number of vulnerabilities including: a web script injection problem, a protection mechanism bypass, a security check bypass, a remote global variable bypass, cross site scripting vulnerabilities, an SQL injection vulnerability, a remote regular expression modification problem, missing input sanitizing, and a missing request validation problem.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-925-1 2005-12-22

Comments (none posted)

phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):phpmyadmin CVE #(s):CVE-2005-4079 CVE-2005-3665
Created:December 12, 2005 Updated:November 20, 2006
Description: Stefan Esser reported multiple vulnerabilities found in phpMyAdmin. The $GLOBALS variable allows modifying the global variable import_blacklist to open phpMyAdmin to local and remote file inclusion, depending on your PHP version (CVE-2005-4079, PMASA-2005-9). Furthermore, it is also possible to conduct an XSS attack via the $HTTP_HOST variable and a local and remote file inclusion because the contents of the variable are under total control of the attacker (CVE-2005-3665, PMASA-2005-8).
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1207-2 2006-11-19
Debian DSA-1207-1 2006-11-09
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:004 2006-01-26
Gentoo 200512-03 2005-12-11

Comments (none posted)

pound: HTTP Request Smuggling Attack

Package(s):pound CVE #(s):CVE-2005-3751
Created:January 10, 2006 Updated:June 8, 2006
Description: HTTP requests with conflicting Content-Length and Transfer-Encoding headers could lead to HTTP Request Smuggling Attack, which can be exploited to bypass packet filters or poison web caches.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200606-05 2006-06-07
Debian DSA-934-1 2006-01-09

Comments (none posted)

Py2Play: remote execution of arbitrary Python code

Package(s):Py2Play CVE #(s):CAN-2005-2875
Created:September 19, 2005 Updated:September 6, 2006
Description: Py2Play uses Python pickles to send objects over a peer-to-peer game network, that clients accept without restriction the objects and code sent by peers. A remote attacker participating in a Py2Play-powered game can send malicious Python pickles, resulting in the execution of arbitrary Python code on the targeted game client.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200509-09:02 2005-09-17
Debian DSA-856-1 2005-10-10
Gentoo 200509-09 2005-09-17

Comments (none posted)

scorched3d: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):scorched3d CVE #(s):
Created:November 15, 2005 Updated:August 11, 2006
Description: Luigi Auriemma discovered multiple flaws in the Scorched 3D game server, including a format string vulnerability and several buffer overflows. A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to crash a game server or execute arbitrary code with the rights of the game server user.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200511-12:03 2005-11-15
Gentoo 200511-12 2005-11-15

Comments (none posted)

squirrelmail: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):squirrelmail CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0188 CVE-2006-0195 CVE-2006-0377
Created:February 28, 2006 Updated:June 8, 2006
Description: Webmail.php in SquirrelMail 1.4.0 to 1.4.5 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web pages into the right frame via a URL in the right_frame parameter. NOTE: this has been called a cross-site scripting (XSS) issue, but it is different than what is normally identified as XSS. (CVE-2006-0188)

Interpretation conflict in the MagicHTML filter in SquirrelMail 1.4.0 to 1.4.5 allows remote attackers to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks via style sheet specifiers with invalid (1) "/*" and "*/" comments, or (2) a newline in a "url" specifier, which is processed by certain web browsers including Internet Explorer. (CVE-2006-0195)

CRLF injection vulnerability in SquirrelMail 1.4.0 to 1.4.5 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary IMAP commands via newline characters in the mailbox parameter of the sqimap_mailbox_select command, aka "IMAP injection." (CVE-2006-0377)

Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:190884 2006-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0283-01 2006-05-03
Gentoo 200603-09 2006-03-12
Debian DSA-988-1 2006-03-08
Fedora FEDORA-2006-133 2006-03-03
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:049 2006-02-27

Comments (none posted)

sudo: vulnerability via scripts

Package(s):sudo CVE #(s):CAN-2005-4158 CVE-2006-0151
Created:December 16, 2005 Updated:September 1, 2006
Description: Perl and Python scripts run via Sudo can be subverted.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:159 2006-08-31
Debian DSA-946-2 2006-04-08
Slackware SSA:2006-045-08 2006-02-15
SuSE SUSE-SR:2006:002 2006-01-20
Debian DSA-946-1 2006-01-20
Ubuntu USN-235-2 2006-01-09
Ubuntu USN-235-1 2006-01-05
Mandriva MDKSA-2005:234 2005-12-20
Fedora FEDORA-2005-1147 2005-12-16