The Linux Foundation collaboration summit
The first Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit was held June 13
to 16 on Google's campus in Mountain View, California. This event
could be thought of as the coming-out party for the Linux Foundation, the
organization which resulted from the merger of the Open Source Development
Labs and the Free Standards Group. Your editor was able to join this
group, moderate a panel of kernel developers, and present his "kernel
report" talk to an interested subset of attendees. This event has been
well covered by many others, so your editor will focus on his
particular impressions. Some other reports worth reading include:
Your editor has been to a lot of Linux-oriented events over the years. The
collaboration summit was nearly unique, however, in the variety of people
who attended. It was certainly not a developer's conference, but quite a
few free software developers were to be found there. It is not a business
conference along the lines of OSBC, but plenty of executive-type business
people were in the room. Throw in a certain amount of media (on the first
day), a handful of lawyers, high-profile users from Fortune 500
companies, and some PR people and you get a cross-section of the Linux
ecosystem from developers of low-level code through to the people trying to
make that code work in serious business settings. It is rare that people
from the wider community get together and talk in this sort of setting.
The stated purpose of the event was to promote collaboration across this
wider community. The first step toward collaboration is understanding; the
summit was almost certainly successful in helping members of the community
understand each other better. For example, the kernel panel was a useful
exercise in communicating the developers' thoughts to their user
community. But a comment your editor heard more than once was that the most
interesting part of the panel was just seeing how those developers interact
with each other. Users, vendors, lawyers, and more were all able to
discuss the ups and downs of Linux from their point of view. The bottom
line is that things are going great, but they could be made to go quite a
bit better yet.
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth was the keynote speaker for the first day
of the summit. His talk covered a number of topics, but the core point,
perhaps, was this: while we have many tools which promote collaboration
within projects, we lack tools to help with collaboration
between projects. Wouldn't it be nice to have one distributed bug
tracking system and a comprehensive, distributed source management system?
Maybe the kernel developers and the enterprise distribution vendors could
get together and designate an occasional kernel development cycle as being
targeted toward enterprise release - and, thus, put together with a larger
emphasis on stability. In general, there is a great deal of friction
within the system; removing that friction will be an important part of our
future success.
Some themes were heard many times. There is a lot of interest in GPLv3 and
the impact it will have on the industry. The message from the summit was
that little will happen in a hurry, and that the best thing to do is to sit
and watch. Everybody wants better power management and better device
driver coverage. There is real stress between the enterprise customers'
desires for stability, security fixes, and new features. Freedom matters:
it is fun to hear a manager from Motorola talk about how using Linux makes it
possible for the company to create interesting new products that couldn't
have been done on "somebody else's stack." And, some press headlines
notwithstanding, large proprietary software vendors were absent from the
room - both physically and from the discussions which were held. This was
not a meeting intended to design a "counterattack"; it was a way for the
larger free software community to promote cooperation and understanding
within itself.
Finally, the summit was clearly intended to help the Linux Foundation
figure out what role it should really be playing. This organization is
still relatively new; it has a short period of time to prove that it will
be worth the fees that its members pay into it. The Foundation is settling
into three basic roles: promoting the development of Linux, protecting
Linux from threats, and working to standardize the platform. There
appeared to be wide agreement that, by organizing events like this summit,
the Foundation is off to a good start.
Comments (2 posted)
Test driving Firefox 3
The Firefox 3.0 (FF3) development team has been busy, releasing a steady
stream of alphas over the last six months, in preparation for a final
release late this year.
The latest release is
Alpha
5,
which seems like a good time to check in on the project and see what
changes have been made. The project, codenamed Gran
Paradiso, maintains an extensive set of documents on its planning center wiki. These documents are
worth a look for anyone interested in what features are planned, but also
provide insight into the planning process itself.
The first thing to notice is that there is not much different from Firefox
2.0, at least in the main window. The familiar buttons and bars are present in
their usual locations, the menus remain essentially the same, though the
performance seems a bit snappier. The main window is likely to remain the
same through the final release, but much of the rest of the UI will be
tweaked. So far, the team has focused more on the underlying code, while
using various
blogs
and
wiki
pages to mock up the UI.
Much of the new functionality is under the covers in the Gecko 1.9
rendering engine. A specific goal of the engine development team was to
pass the
Acid2 browser test
and they have succeeded in doing that. Switching the engine to use the Cairo 2D graphics library will provide
support for SVG, PostScript, PDF and other formats. Performance
enhancements and a more native look, especially for the Mac, are also on
tap for FF3.
The biggest new feature for users has not yet appeared in the browser.
Places is a feature
meant to unify bookmarks, history and RSS feeds, while providing a means to
tag them to help organize them. In order to do that,
FF3 is storing the Places information in an SQLite database. This database will also
be available to Firefox Add-ons which can then offer other ways to view and
organize them.
Using SQLite for bookmarks has been enabled for Alpha 5, with numerous
warnings about making a backup of your bookmarks file before running it.
Tagging, history and RSS feeds are still awaiting a UI before their storage
in the SQLite database is enabled.
One UI element that has been updated is the page info popup (image at
left), which received
an overhaul bringing its look more in line with other tabbed popups,
Preferences for example. More work of that sort can be expected as
consistency within the UI is definitely a goal
for FF3. The content handling interface is part of that work.
Earlier versions had different dialog boxes depending on how the
content was retrieved, which caused some confusion in users, so FF3 will unify
those dialogs into one consistent view.
Security is another area where the developers are putting in significant
effort. Providing users with feedback, about the security of a site, without
overwhelming them with warnings and popups, is a difficult problem, but some
interesting ideas are emerging. With fairly simple UI changes, user
confusion can be reduced. Modifying the location bar to remove the
"favicon" (which some malicious sites set to the lock icon) and to
highlight just the domain portion of the URL can go a long way towards
helping users determine what sites they are visiting. Mozilla is also
working with Google to generate a list of sites delivering malicious
content and FF3 will block access to those sites.
One worrisome development is the removal of the "same domain" restriction
on XMLHttpRequest (XHR) calls. XHR is the workhorse of the AJAX style of
browser interaction and web designers have long chafed under the
restriction that JavaScript could only "call home". The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has some
proposals on lifting that restriction by using "access control" lists and
the FF3 team plans to
implement them. The current restrictions have served us well, at least from a
security perspective; hopefully this change has been well thought out.
Another big addition, still in the "coming soon" category, is the addition
of more offline capabilities to the browser. Being able to run web
applications when not connected to the internet is one of the main goals.
In order to do that, the history of pages will have to include the state of
the Document Object Model (DOM) and the execution state of JavaScript
embedded in the page. With a big enough browser cache, this would allow
enough context to re-browse pages from weeks ago, even when offline.
Overall, FF3 looks like an exciting release with a wide variety of new
features. The current alpha does not really provide even an approximation
of the full feature set, but it is still worth a look. At roughly the
halfway point in FF3 development, great strides have been made with more to
come.
Comments (21 posted)
Long-term support and backport risk
One of the main selling points touted by many Linux-oriented vendors is
stability. Once a customer buys a subscription for an "enterprise" Linux
or embedded systems product, the vendor will fix bugs in the software but
otherwise keep it stable. The value for customers is that they can put
these supported distributions into important parts of their operations (or
products) secure in the knowledge that their supplier will provide updates
which keep the system bug-free and secure without breaking things. This
business model predates Linux by many years, but, as the success of certain
companies shows, there is still demand for this sort of service.
So it is interesting that, at the recently-concluded Linux Foundation
Collaboration Summit, numerous people were heard expressing concerns about
this model. Grumbles were voiced in the official panels and over beer in
the evening; they came from representatives of the relevant vendors, their
customers, and from not-so-innocent bystanders. The "freeze and support"
model has its merits, but there appears to be a growing group of people who
are wondering if it is the best way to support a fast-moving system like
Linux.
The problem is that there is a great deal of stress between the "completely
stable" ideal and the desire for new features and hardware support. That
leads to the distribution of some interesting kernels. Consider, for
example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, which was released
in February, 2005, with a stabilized 2.6.9 kernel. RHEL4 systems are still
running a 2.6.9 kernel, but it has seen a few changes:
- Update
1 added a disk-based crash dump facility (requiring driver-level
support), a completely new Megaraid driver, a number of block I/O
subsystem and driver changes to support filesystems larger than 2TB,
and new versions of a dozen or so device drivers.
- Update
2 threw in SystemTap, an updated ext3 filesystem, the in-kernel
key management subsystem, a new OpenIPMI module, a new audit
subsystem, and about a dozen updated device drivers.
- For update
3, Red Hat added the InfiniBand subsystem, access control list
support, the error detection and correction (EDAC) subsystem, and
plenty of updated drivers.
- Update
4 added WiFi protected access (WPA) capability, ACL support in
NFS, support for a number of processor models and low-level chipsets,
and a large number of new and updated drivers.
The end result is that, while running uname -r on a RHEL4
system will yield
"2.6.9", what Red Hat is shipping is a far cry from the original
2.6.9 kernel, and, more to the point, it is far removed from the kernel
shipped with RHEL4 when it first became available. This enterprise kernel
is not quite as stable as one might have thought.
Greg Kroah-Hartman recently posted an
article on this topic which makes it clear that Red Hat is not alone in
backporting features into its stable kernels:
An example of how this works can be seen in the latest Novell
SLES10 Service Pack 1 release. Originally the SLES10 kernel was
based on the 2.6.16 kernel release with a number of bugfixes added
to it. At the time of the Service Pack 1 release, it was still
based on the 2.6.16 kernel version, but the SCSI core, libata core,
and all SATA drivers were backported from the 2.6.20 kernel.org
kernel release to be included in this 2.6.16 based kernel
package. This changed a number of ABI issues for any external SCSI
or storage driver that they would need to be aware of when
producing an updated version of their driver for the Service Pack 1
release.
Similar things have been known to happen in
the embedded world. In every case, the distributors are responding to two
conflicting wishes expressed by their customers: those customers want
stability, but they also want useful new features and support for new
hardware. This conflict forces distributors to walk a fine line, carefully
backporting just enough new stuff to keep their customers happy without
breaking things.
The word from the summit is that this balancing act does not always work.
There were stories of production systems falling over after updates were
applied - to the point that some high-end users are starting to reconsider
their use of Linux in some situations. It is hard to see how this problem
can be fixed: the backporting of code is an inherently risky operation. No
matter how well the backported code has been tested, it has not been
tested in the older environment into which it has been transplanted. This
code may depend on other, seemingly unrelated fixes which were merged at
other times; all of those fixes must be picked up to do the backport
properly. It is
also not the same code which is found in current kernels;
distributor-private changes will have to be made to get the backported code
to work with the older kernel. Backporting code can only serve to
destabilize it, often in obscure ways which do not come to light until some
important customer attempts to put it into production.
All of this argues against the backporting of code into the stabilized
kernels used in long-term-support distributions. But customer demand for
features, and (especially) hardware support will not go away. In fact, it
is likely to get worse. Quoting Greg again:
For machines that must work with new hardware all the time (laptops
and some desktops), the 12-18 month cycle before adding new device
support makes them pretty much impossible to use at
times. (i.e. people want you to support the latest toy they just
bought from the store.) This makes things like "enterprise" kernels
that are directed toward desktops quite uncomfortable to use after
even a single year has passed.
So, if one goes on the assumption that the Plan For World Domination
includes moving Linux out of the server room onto a wider variety of
systems, the pressure for additional hardware support in "stabilized"
kernels can only grow.
What is to be done? Greg offers three approaches, the first two of which
are business as usual and the elimination of backports. The disadvantages
of the first option should have been made clear by now; going to a "bug
fixes only" mode has its appeal, but the resulting kernels will look
old and obsolete in a very short time. Greg's third option is one which
your editor heard advocated by several people at the Collaboration summit:
the long-term-support distributions would simply move to a current kernel
every time they do a major update.
Such a change would have obvious advantages: all of the new features and
new drivers would come automatically, with no need for backporting.
Distributors could focus more on stabilizing the mainline, knowing that
those fixes would get to their customers quickly. Many more bug fixes
would get into kernel updates in general; no distributor can possibly hope
to backport even a significant percentage of the fixes which get into the
mainline. The attempt to graft an old support model better suited to
proprietary systems would end, and long-term support Linux customers would
get something that looks more like Linux.
Of course, there may be some disadvantages as well. Dave Jones has expressed some
discomfort with this idea:
The big problem with this scenario is that it ignores the fact that
kernel.org kernels are on the whole significantly less stable these
days than they used to be. With the unified development/stable
model, we introduce a lot of half-baked untested code into the
trees, and this typically doesn't get stabilised until after a
distro rebases to that kernel for their next release, and uncovers
all the nasty problems with it whilst it's in beta. As well as
pulling 'all bugfixes and security updates', a rebase pulls in all
sorts of unknown new problems.
As Dave also notes, some mainline kernel releases are better than others;
the current 2.6.21 kernel would probably not be welcomed in many stable
environments. So any plan which involved upgrading to current kernels
would have to give some thought to the problem of ensuring that those
kernels are suitably stable.
Some of the key ideas to achieve that goal may already be in place. There
was talk at the summit of getting the long-term support vendors to
coordinate their release schedules to be able to take advantage of an
occasional extra-stable kernel release cycle. It has often been suggested
that the kernel could go to an even/odd cycle model, where even-numbered
releases are done with stability as the primary goal. Such a cycle could
work well for distributors; an odd release could be used in beta
distribution releases, with the idea of fixing the resulting bugs for the
following even release. The final distribution release (or update) would
then use the resulting stable kernel. There is opposition to the even/odd
idea, but that could change if the benefits become clear enough.
Both Greg and Dave consider the effects such a change would have on the
providers of binary-only modules. Greg thinks that staying closer to the
upstream would make life easier by reducing the number of kernel variants
that these vendors have to support. Dave, instead, thinks that binary-only
modules would break more often, and "This kind of breakage in an
update isn't acceptable for the people paying for those expensive support
contracts." If the latter position proves true, it can be seen as
an illustration of the costs imposed on the process by proprietary modules.
Dave concludes with the thought that the status quo will not change anytime
soon. Certainly distribution vendors would have to spend a lot of time
thinking and talking with their customers before making such a fundamental
change in how their products are maintained. But the pressures for change
would appear to be strong, and customers may well conclude that they would
be better off staying closer to the mainline. Linux and free software have
forced many fundamental changes in how the industry operates; we may yet
have a better solution to the long-term support problem as well.
Comments (50 posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Security
Red Hat and IBM get certified
Red Hat and IBM recently
announced
that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) has earned the highest level of
security certification achievable by commercial off-the-shelf operating
systems. The certification is applicable when RHEL5 is running on IBM
hardware, but all of the software is freely available, which may reduce
the worries of customers regardless of which hardware they are considering running Linux on. The Fedora and
CentOS distributions will immediately benefit, because they use the
same software and SELinux policies, but other distributions can use the
information as well.
The certification
that RHEL5 achieved comes from one of the most acronym-dense
regions of the internet, which is, perhaps, unsurprising for a partnership
between industry and the US government. Here is how the press release puts it:
[RHEL5] has been approved by the National Information Assurance Partnership for
Common Criteria Evaluation & Validation Scheme [NIAP-CCEVS] at Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4+) for Labeled Security Protection Profile (LSPP), Controlled Access Protection Profile (CAPP), and Role-Based Access Control Protection Profile (RBAC).
The NIAP is overseen by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and exists to
create and administer certification programs like CCEVS.
The various protection profiles list the security requirements that need to
be met to be certified. CAPP is concerned mostly with standard UNIX-style
users and permissions,
with some audit requirements thrown in. LSPP and RBAC are concerned with
the security capabilities provided by SELinux along with auditing
requirements. The profiles document the behavior that is
expected while the testing verifies that the system does indeed behave that
way.
These kinds of certifications are nice, in a checkbox kind of way. There
are many organizations that cannot or will not buy products that are not
certified for a particular level and protection profile. Windows Server has been certified at
EAL4, so filling in this checkbox for Linux may well remove a barrier to
Linux adoption in some places. Obtaining certification at this level is
great deal of work; Red Hat and IBM are to be commended for spending the
time and money to get to this point.
That being said, what does an EAL4+ mean for the security of servers that
run RHEL5? As we said in late
2003, when (pre-Novell) SuSE teamed up with IBM to get an EAL2+
certification, the answer is, unfortunately, not much. It would seem that
EAL4+ is a big step up from EAL2+, which it is, but not in the kinds of
protections it provides. The
EAL level is completely driven by how much testing and documentation go
into the certification; how much "assurance" there is that the profile is
met. The same profile (CAPP) was used in both.
In addition, the protection profiles are limited to:
a level of protection, which is appropriate for an assumed non-hostile and well-managed user community requiring protection against threats of inadvertent or casual attempts to breach the system security. The profile is not intended to be applicable to circumstances in which protection is required against determined attempts by hostile and well-funded attackers to breach system security.
This puts most, if not all, interesting security threats outside of the
scope of the testing. Adding two additional protection
profiles, as was done this time, is certainly significant, but they
still operate under the "no hostiles" caveat.
Kernel hacker James Morris
comments on
the certification:
A lot of people thought it would be outright impossible to get an open source OS certified at this level. Not only were they wrong, but we've done it in a way which makes it part of the mainline kernel, upstream userland, and integrated into standard distributions. It is not some out-dated, incompatible and outrageously expensive fork of the OS, as has historically been the case with trusted OSes. "Military-strength" security is just now just another feature you get as standard in Linux, and it receives the same testing and community benefits as the rest of the OS.
Evidently, "military strength" security is only able to resist its own
users making mistakes rather than a concerted effort by an enemy, but this is
still a marvelous accomplishment.
Perhaps the
most unfortunate part of this certification process is that it is likely to
vastly underestimate the abilities of an SELinux equipped system.
It would be very interesting to see what kind of protection profile could
actually be accommodated by RHEL5; it is likely to be much stronger than any
we have seen from CCEVS. But, given that customers are typically interested
in the checkbox much more than security, we will probably never know.
Comments (5 posted)
New vulnerabilities
apache2: information disclosure
| Package(s): | apache |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1862
|
| Created: | June 20, 2007 |
Updated: | February 18, 2008 |
| Description: |
From the Mandriva advisory: "The recall_headers function in mod_mem_cache in Apache 2.2.4 does not
properly copy all levels of header data, which can cause Apache to
return HTTP headers containing previously-used data, which could be
used to obtain potentially sensitive information by unauthorized users." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
evolution-data-server: malicious server arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | evolution-data-server |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-3257
|
| Created: | June 18, 2007 |
Updated: | November 7, 2007 |
| Description: |
From the GNOME
bugzilla: "The "SEQUENCE" value in the GData of the IMAP code
(camel-imap-folder.c) is converted from a string using strtol. This allows
for negative values. The imap_rescan uses this value as an int. It checks
for !seq and seq>summary.length. It doesn't check for seq <
0. Although seq is used as the index of an array." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
gd: denial of service
| Package(s): | gd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2756
|
| Created: | June 14, 2007 |
Updated: | February 28, 2008 |
| Description: |
Libgd2 has a denial of service vulnerability involving the incorrect
validation of PNG callback results. If an application that is linked
against libgd2 is used to process a specially-crafted PNG file,
a denial of service involving CPU resource consumption can be
caused. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
iscsi-initiator-utils: denial of service
| Package(s): | iscsi-initiator-utils |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-3099
CVE-2007-3100
|
| Created: | June 14, 2007 |
Updated: | June 20, 2007 |
| Description: |
The iscsid SCSI management daemon has two denial of service vulnerabilities.
The first involves checking the client's uid on the listening socket
instead of the newly accepted connection, this allows anyone to
to perform management operations on the iSCSI initiator and crash
iscsid.
The second vulnerability involves the iscsid logging mechanism.
Logs are sent to a shared memory area and a child process feeds them
to syslog. The memory is protected by a semaphore wet to mode 0666,
allowing arbitrary access to the semaphore. Random users can
lock up the semaphore and iscsid will block and hang on the next
attempt to send a log message. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libexif: integer overflow
| Package(s): | libexif |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-4168
CVE-2006-4168
|
| Created: | June 15, 2007 |
Updated: | July 3, 2007 |
| Description: |
An integer overflow flaw was found in the way libexif parses EXIF image
tags. If a victim opens a carefully crafted EXIF image file it could cause
the application linked against libexif to execute arbitrary code or crash. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libphp-phpmailer: command execution
| Package(s): | libphp-phpmailer |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-3215
|
| Created: | June 20, 2007 |
Updated: | June 20, 2007 |
| Description: |
libphp-phpmailer does not do sufficient input validation, enabling shell command injection attacks. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mplayer: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | mplayer |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2948
|
| Created: | June 20, 2007 |
Updated: | July 25, 2007 |
| Description: |
The CDDB code in mplayer suffers from "insufficient boundary checks," leaving it exposed to buffer overruns. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
phpPgAdmin: cross-site scripting
| Package(s): | phppgadmin |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2865
CVE-2007-5728
|
| Created: | June 18, 2007 |
Updated: | November 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in sqledit.php in phpPgAdmin
4.1.1 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via
the server parameter. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
phprojekt: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | phprojekt |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1575
CVE-2007-1639
CVE-2007-1638
CVE-2007-1576
|
| Created: | June 20, 2007 |
Updated: | June 20, 2007 |
| Description: |
There is a long list of vulnerabilities in PHProjekt prior to version 5.2.1; they can be exploited (by an authenticated user) for SQL injection attacks, arbitrary PHP code execution, and cross-site scripting. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Updated vulnerabilities
apache: cross-site scripting
| Package(s): | apache |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3918
|
| Created: | August 9, 2006 |
Updated: | April 4, 2008 |
| Description: |
From the Red Hat advisory: "A bug was found in Apache where an invalid Expect header sent to the server
was returned to the user in an unescaped error message. This could
allow an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack if a victim was
tricked into connecting to a site and sending a carefully crafted Expect
header." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Asterisk: two SIP denial of service vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | Asterisk |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1561
CVE-2007-1594
|
| Created: | April 3, 2007 |
Updated: | August 27, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Madynes research team at INRIA has discovered that Asterisk contains a
null pointer dereferencing error in the SIP channel when handling INVITE
messages. Furthermore qwerty1979 discovered that Asterisk 1.2.x fails to
properly handle SIP responses with return code 0. A remote attacker could
cause an Asterisk server listening for SIP messages to crash by sending a
specially crafted SIP message or answering with a 0 return code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
bugzilla: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | bugzilla |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5453
CVE-2006-5454
CVE-2006-5455
|
| Created: | November 10, 2006 |
Updated: | August 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
Bugzilla has the following vulnerabilities:
Input data passed to various fields is not properly sanitized before
being passed back to users.
Users can gain unauthorized access to read attachment
descriptions while using diff mode.
HTTP GET and HTTP POST requests can be used to perform unauthorized
actions due to improper verification.
Input that is passed to showdependencygraph.cgi is not properly
sanitized before being returned to users. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
clamav: denial of service
| Package(s): | clamav |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2650
|
| Created: | June 5, 2007 |
Updated: | July 20, 2007 |
| Description: |
A vulnerability in the OLE2 parser in ClamAV was found that could allow a
remote attacker to cause a denial of service via resource consumption with
a carefully crafted OLE2 file. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
cups: denial of service
| Package(s): | cups |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0720
|
| Created: | March 26, 2007 |
Updated: | February 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
Previous versions of the cups package could be forced to hang via a client
"partially negotiating" an ssl connection. In this state, cups would not
allow other connections to be made, a denial of service. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Cyrus-SASL: DIGEST-MD5 Pre-Authentication Denial of Service
| Package(s): | cyrus-sasl |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1721
|
| Created: | April 21, 2006 |
Updated: | September 4, 2007 |
| Description: |
Cyrus-SASL contains an unspecified vulnerability in the DIGEST-MD5
process that could lead to a Denial of Service. An attacker could possibly
exploit this vulnerability by sending specially crafted data stream to the
Cyrus-SASL server, resulting in a Denial of Service even if the attacker is
not able to authenticate. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
dovecot: directory traversal
| Package(s): | dovecot |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2231
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | May 21, 2008 |
| Description: |
Directory traversal vulnerability in index/mbox/mbox-storage.c in Dovecot
before 1.0.rc29, when using the zlib plugin, allows remote attackers to
read arbitrary gzipped (.gz) mailboxes (mbox files) via a .. (dot dot)
sequence in the mailbox name. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
evolution: format string error
| Package(s): | evolution |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1002
|
| Created: | March 27, 2007 |
Updated: | February 27, 2008 |
| Description: |
A format string error in the "write_html()" function in calendar/gui/
e-cal-component-memo-preview.c when displaying a memo's categories can
potentially be exploited to execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted
shared memo containing format specifiers. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (1 posted)
pop mail man-in-the-middle attacks
| Package(s): | evolution thunderbird mutt fetchmail |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1558
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| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | August 7, 2007 |
| Description: |
The APOP protocol allows remote attackers to guess the first 3 characters
of a password via man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks that use crafted message
IDs and MD5 collisions. NOTE: this design-level issue potentially affects
all products that use APOP, including (1) Thunderbird, (2) Evolution, (3)
mutt, and (4) fetchmail. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
fail2ban: denial of service
| Package(s): | fail2ban |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6302
|
| Created: | February 16, 2007 |
Updated: | July 30, 2007 |
| Description: |
fail2ban 0.7.4 and earlier does not properly parse sshd logs file, which
allows remote attackers to add arbitrary hosts to the /etc/hosts.deny file
and cause a denial of service by adding arbitrary IP addresses to the sshd
log file, as demonstrated by logging in to ssh using a login name
containing certain strings with an IP address. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (3 posted)
file: integer overflow
| Package(s): | file |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2799
|
| Created: | June 1, 2007 |
Updated: | October 19, 2007 |
| Description: |
Colin Percival from FreeBSD reported that the previous fix for the
file_printf() buffer overflow introduced a new integer overflow. A remote
attacker could entice a user to run the file program on an overly large
file (more than 1Gb) that would trigger an integer overflow on 32-bit
systems, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code with the
rights of the user running file. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (3 posted)
firefox: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | firefox mozilla seamonkey thunderbird |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1362
CVE-2007-2867
CVE-2007-2868
CVE-2007-2869
CVE-2007-2870
CVE-2007-2871
|
| Created: | June 4, 2007 |
Updated: | August 29, 2007 |
| Description: |
Various flaws were discovered in the layout and JavaScript engines. By
tricking a user into opening a malicious web page, an attacker could
execute arbitrary code with the user's privileges. (CVE-2007-2867,
CVE-2007-2868)
A flaw was discovered in the form autocomplete feature. By tricking a user
into opening a malicious web page, an attacker could cause a persistent
denial of service. (CVE-2007-2869)
Nicolas Derouet discovered flaws in cookie handling. By tricking a user
into opening a malicious web page, an attacker could force the browser to
consume large quantities of disk or memory while processing long cookie
paths. (CVE-2007-1362)
A flaw was discovered in the same-origin policy handling of the
addEventListener JavaScript method. A malicious web site could exploit
this to modify the contents, or steal confidential data (such as
passwords), of other web pages. (CVE-2007-2870)
Chris Thomas discovered a flaw in XUL popups. A malicious web site
could exploit this to spoof or obscure portions of the browser UI,
such as the location bar. (CVE-2007-2871) |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (3 posted)
freetype: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | freetype |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2754
|
| Created: | May 24, 2007 |
Updated: | July 19, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Freetype font rendering library versions 2.3.4 and below
has an integer sign error. Remote attackers may be able to
create a specially crafted TrueType Font file with a negative
n_points value that will cause an integer overflow and heap-based
buffer overflow, allowing the execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
freetype: integer overflows
| Package(s): | freetype |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0747
CVE-2006-1861
CVE-2006-2493
CVE-2006-2661
CVE-2006-3467
|
| Created: | June 8, 2006 |
Updated: | October 10, 2007 |
| Description: |
The FreeType library has several integer overflow vulnerabilities.
If a user can be tricked into installing a specially
crafted font file, arbitrary code can be executed with the privilege
of the user. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
gcc: file overwrite vulnerability
| Package(s): | gcc |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3619
|
| Created: | September 6, 2006 |
Updated: | March 14, 2008 |
| Description: |
The fastjar utility found in the GNU compiler collection does not perform adequate file path checking, allowing the creation or overwriting of files outside of the current directory tree. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
gd: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | gd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0455
|
| Created: | February 7, 2007 |
Updated: | February 28, 2008 |
| Description: |
The gd graphics library contains a buffer overflow which could enable a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Note that various other packages include code from gd and could also be vulnerable. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (2 posted)
horde-kronolith: local file inclusion
| Package(s): | horde-kronolith |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6175
|
| Created: | January 17, 2007 |
Updated: | March 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
Kronolith contains a mistake in lib/FBView.php where a raw, unfiltered
string is used instead of a sanitized string to view local files. An
authenticated attacker could craft an HTTP GET request that uses directory
traversal techniques to execute any file on the web server as PHP code,
which could allow information disclosure or arbitrary code execution with
the rights of the user running the PHP application (usually the webserver
user). |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
ImageMagick: integer overflows
| Package(s): | imagemagick |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1797
|
| Created: | April 4, 2007 |
Updated: | April 17, 2008 |
| Description: |
Multiple integer overflows in ImageMagick before 6.3.3-5 allow remote
attackers to execute arbitrary code via (1) a crafted DCM image, which
results in a heap-based overflow in the ReadDCMImage function, or (2) the
(a) colors or (b) comments field in a crafted XWD image, which results in a
heap-based overflow in the ReadXWDImage function, different issues than
CVE-2007-1667. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
imlib2: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | imlib2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4806
CVE-2006-4807
CVE-2006-4808
CVE-2006-4809
|
| Created: | November 6, 2006 |
Updated: | August 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
M. Joonas Pihlaja discovered that imlib2 did not sufficiently verify the
validity of ARGB, JPG, LBM, PNG, PNM, TGA, and TIFF images. If a user
were tricked into viewing or processing a specially crafted image with
an application that uses imlib2, the flaws could be exploited to execute
arbitrary code with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
ipsec-tools: denial of service
| Package(s): | ipsec-tools |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1841
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| Created: | April 10, 2007 |
Updated: | August 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
A flaw was discovered in the IPSec key exchange server "racoon". Remote
attackers could send a specially crafted packet and disrupt established
IPSec tunnels, leading to a denial of service. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
jasper: denial of service
| Package(s): | jasper |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2721
|
| Created: | June 1, 2007 |
Updated: | November 6, 2007 |
| Description: |
The jpc_qcx_getcompparms function in jpc/jpc_cs.c could allow remote
user-assisted attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly
corrupt the heap via malformed image files. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kdebase: information leak
| Package(s): | kdebase |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2022
|
| Created: | June 13, 2007 |
Updated: | September 19, 2007 |
| Description: |
A problem with the interaction between the Flash Player and the Konqueror
web browser was found. The problem could lead to key presses leaking to the
Flash Player applet instead of the browser.
NOTE: CVE number may be incorrect, see CVE entry |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (1 posted)
kdelibs: cross-site scripting
| Package(s): | kdelibs konqeror |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0537
|
| Created: | February 5, 2007 |
Updated: | August 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
Konqueror 3.5.5 does not properly parse HTML comments, which allows remote
attackers to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and bypass some XSS
protection schemes by embedding certain HTML tags within a comment, a
related issue to CVE-2007-0478. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1357
|
| Created: | April 16, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The atalk_sum_skb function in AppleTalk for Linux kernel 2.6.x before
2.6.21, and possibly 2.4.x, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (crash) via an AppleTalk frame that is shorter than the specified
length, which triggers a BUG_ON call when an attempt is made to perform a
checksum. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5749
CVE-2006-4814
CVE-2006-6106
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| Created: | January 5, 2007 |
Updated: | May 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
A security issue has been reported in Linux kernel due to an error in
drivers/isdn/i4l/isdn_ppp.c as the "isdn_ppp_ccp_reset_alloc_state()"
function never initializes an event timer before scheduling it with the
"add_timer()" function.
The mincore function in the kernel does not properly lock access to user
space, which has unspecified impact and attack vectors, possibly related to
a deadlock.
Another vulnerability has been reported in Linux kernel caused by a
boundary error within the handling of incoming CAPI messages in
net/bluetooth/cmtp/capi.c. This can be exploited to overwrite certain
Kernel data structures. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4623
|
| Created: | October 18, 2006 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The kernel DVB layer can be caused to crash with maliciously-formatted unidirectional lightweight encapsulation (ULE) data. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0005
CVE-2007-1000
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| Created: | March 15, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Linux kernel has a boundary error problem with the
Omnikey CardMan 4040 driver read and write functions. This can be used
to cause a buffer overflow and possible execution or arbitrary code with
kernel privileges.
The ipv6_getsockopt_sticky function in
net/ipv6/ipv6_sockglue.c is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference.
Local users can use this to crash the kernel or to disclose kernel
memory. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0007
CVE-2007-0006
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| Created: | February 15, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
Linux kernel versions from 2.6.9 to 2.6.20 have a denial of service
vulnerability. A remote attacker can cause the key_alloc_serial
function's key serial number collision avoidance code to have a
null dereference, resulting in a crash. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (1 posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4535
CVE-2006-4538
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| Created: | September 18, 2006 |
Updated: | December 3, 2007 |
| Description: |
Sridhar Samudrala discovered a local denial of service vulnerability
in the handling of SCTP sockets. By opening such a socket with a
special SO_LINGER value, a local attacker could exploit this to crash
the kernel. (CVE-2006-4535)
Kirill Korotaev discovered that the ELF loader on the ia64 and sparc
platforms did not sufficiently verify the memory layout. By attempting
to execute a specially crafted executable, a local user could exploit
this to crash the kernel. (CVE-2006-4538) |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1861
CVE-2007-2242
|
| Created: | May 1, 2007 |
Updated: | February 8, 2008 |
| Description: |
The netlink protocol has an infinite recursion bug that allows users to
cause a kernel crash. Also the IPv6 protocol allows remote attackers to
cause a denial of service via crafted IPv6 type 0 route headers
(IPV6_RTHDR_TYPE_0) that create network amplification between two routers. |
| Alerts: |
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Comments (none posted