Security

Multiple ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) device drivers do not pad frames with null bytes, which allows remote attackers to obtain information from previous packets or kernel memory by using malformed packets. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0001 to this issue.

A vulnerability exists in O_DIRECT handling in Linux kernels 2.4.10 and later that can create a limited information leak where any user on the system with write privileges to a file system can read information from that file system (from previously deleted files), and can create minor file system corruption (easily repaired by fsck). Red Hat Linux in its default configuration is not affected by this bug, because the ext3 file system (the default file system in Red Hat Linux 7.2 and later) does not support the O_DIRECT feature. Of the kernels Red Hat has released, only the 2.4.18 kernels have this bug. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0018 to this issue.

A problem has been found in the Kerberos ftp client. When retrieving a file with a filename beginning with a pipe character, the ftp client will pass the filename to the command shell in a system() call. This could allow a malicious ftp server to write to files outside of the current directory or execute commands as the user running the ftp client.

The Kerberos ftp client runs as the default ftp client when the Kerberos package krb5-workstation is installed on a Red Hat Linux distribution.

Read the full announcment at: http://dc.ketelhot.de/pipermail/dc/2003-January/000094.html

Note that mail processing programs which use this package can be affected by this vulnerability; in particular, SpamAssassin is vulnerable if you use the -r or -w flags.

The SuSE Security Team reviewed critical parts of that package and found several buffer overflows and other bugs remote attackers could exploit to gain access on systems running vulnerable LDAP servers. In addition to these bugs, various local exploitable bugs within the OpenLDAP2 libraries (openldap2-devel package) have been fixed.

Since there is no workaround possible except shutting down the LDAP server, an update is strongly recommended.

Red Hat has sent out an alert (not a regular advisory) suggesting that customers apply its previous BIND updates, which upgrade the system to BIND9.

Unfortunatly that does not mean that Linux systems are not vulnerable. Similar code, without Olaf Firch's fixes, is in the glibc getnetbyXXX functions. These functions are described in the SuSE alert as " used by very few applications only, such as ifconfig and ifuser, which makes exploits less likely."

CERT Advisory: CA-2002-19 Buffer Overflow in Multiple DNS Resolver Libraries

CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684

A buffer overflow bug in the Canna server up to and including version 3.5b2 allows a local user to gain the privileges of the user 'bin' which could lead to further exploits. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2002-1158 to this issue.

A lack of validation of requests has been found that affects Canna version 3.6 and earlier. A malicious remote user could exploit this vulnerability to leak information, or cause a denial of service attack. (CAN-2002-1159)

See also http://canna.sourceforge.jp/sec/Canna-2002-01.txt

CAN-2002-1158
CAN-2002-1159

On servers which are configured to allow anonymous read-only access, this bug could be used by anonymous users to gain write privileges. Users with CVS write privileges can then use the Update-prog and Checkin-prog features to execute arbitrary commands on the server.

All users of CVS are advised to upgrade to erratum packages which contain patches to correct the double-free bug.

See also this CERT advisory

When the dhcp-relay receives a BOOTP request it forwards the request to the DHCP server using the broadcast MAC address ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff which causes the network interface to reflect the packet back into the socket. To prevent loops the dhcrelay checks whether the relay-address is its own, in which case the packet would be dropped. In combination with a missing upper boundary for the hop counter an attacker can force the dhcp-relay to send a continuing packet storm towards the configured dhcp server(s).

This patch introduces a new commandline switch ``-c maxcount'' and people are advised to start the dhcp-relay with ``dhcrelay -c 10'' or a smaller number, which will only create that many packets.

The dhcrelay program from the ``dhcp'' package does not seem to be affected since DHCP packets are dropped if they were apparently relayed already.

Updating as soon as practical is a good idea.

CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#192995 Integer overflow in xdr_array() function when deserializing the XDR stream

The BIND 4 and BIND 8.2.x stub resolver libraries, and other libraries such as glibc 2.2.5 and earlier, libc, and libresolv, uses the maximum buffer size instead of the actual size when processing a DNS response, which causes the stub resolvers to read past the actual boundary ("read buffer overflow"), allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash).