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Spam blocking with greylisting

A certain amount of attention has recently been given to a spam-blocking method called greylisting. A look at the description of the technique shows that it does not, actually, have much in the new way of ideas. Greylisting might, however, become a useful part of the antispam arsenal at some sites.

The core idea of the greylisting technique has been around for a while. It relies on the fact most spammers do not bother to track and retry deliveries which are declined by the receiving system with a temporary failure status. Real mail systems will retry the message later on, until they run out of patience. Spammers just forget about it and move on. So an effective way of blocking a large percentage of incoming spam is to simply refuse mail from new sources with a temporary failure on the first delivery attempt. Real mail will eventually show up again, and be delivered with a small delay. Most spam will never return.

The greylisting technique uses a slightly finer-grained approach. It creates a three-entry tuple out of the originating address, the sender, and the recipient of the message. If the tuple is new, the mail is refused for a configurable period of time. The use of the three-way tuple helps prevent spam from slipping in by using false sender addresses.

The obvious workaround, from a spammer's point of view, is to add retrying for temporary failures to their code. Given the desire of the spam industry to pollute our mailboxes regardless of how hard we try to prevent that, the implementation of temporary failure retrying is only a matter of time. Of course, mail sent through open relays is generally retried anyway, so widespread use of greylisting could result in more use of open relays, and, perhaps, more attempts to compromise systems to turn them into unwilling relays.

As the author describes it, greylisting is meant to be used in conjunction with other spam-blocking techniques, especially blackhole lists. The hope is that, by the time the temporary failure interval has ended for a particular spam source, that source will have found its way into the blacklists and the message can be blocked permanently. This combination could, indeed, prove hard for the spammers to get around.

Comments (12 posted)

New vulnerabilities

eldav: insecure temporary file

Package(s):eldav CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0438
Created:June 19, 2003 Updated:June 24, 2003
Description: eldav, a WebDAV client for Emacs, creates temporary files without taking appropriate security precautions. This vulnerability could be exploited by a local user to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user running emacs and eldav.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-325-1 2003-06-19

Comments (none posted)

ethereal: security problems in Ethereal 0.9.12

Package(s):ethereal CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0428 CAN-2003-0429 CAN-2003-0431 CAN-2003-0432
Created:June 23, 2003 Updated:November 10, 2003
Description: Several security problems have been found in Ethereal 0.9.12. "It may be possible to make Ethereal crash or run arbitrary code by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, or by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file."
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-030.0 2003-11-07
Yellow Dog YDU-20030718-2 2003-07-18
Red Hat RHSA-2003:203-01 2003-07-03
Gentoo 200306-13 2003-06-25
Conectiva CLA-2003:662 2003-06-25
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:070 2003-06-23

Comments (none posted)

orville-write: buffer overflows

Package(s):orville-write CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0441
Created:June 19, 2003 Updated:June 24, 2003
Description: Orville Write, a replacement for the standard write(1) command, contains a number of buffer overflows. These could be exploited to gain either gid tty or root privileges, depending on the configuration selected when the package is installed.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-326-1 2003-06-19

Comments (none posted)

osh: buffer overflows

Package(s):osh CVE #(s):
Created:June 20, 2003 Updated:June 24, 2003
Description: Steve Kemp discovered that osh, a shell intended to restrict the actions of the user, contains two buffer overflows, in processing environment variables and file redirections. These vulnerabilities could be used to execute arbitrary code, overriding any restrictions placed on the shell.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-329-1 2003-06-20

Comments (none posted)

webfs: buffer overflow

Package(s):webfs CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0445
Created:June 20, 2003 Updated:June 24, 2003
Description: webfs, a lightweight HTTP server for static content, contains a buffer overflow whereby a long Request-URI in an HTTP request could cause arbitrary code to be executed.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-328-1 2003-06-19

Comments (none posted)

xbl: buffer overflows

Package(s):xbl CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0451 CAN-2003-0535
Created:June 20, 2003 Updated:July 9, 2003
Description: Steve Kemp discovered several buffer overflows in xbl, a game, which can be triggered by long command line arguments. This vulnerability could be exploited by a local attacker to gain gid 'games'. This has been assigned CVE # CAN-2003-0451.

Another buffer overflow was discovered in xbl which could also be exploited by a local attacker to gain gid 'games'. This has been assigned CVE # CAN-2003-0535.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-345-1 2003-07-08
Debian DSA-327-1 2003-06-19

Comments (none posted)

xterm: command execution and denial of service

Package(s):XFree86 xterm CVE #(s):CAN-2001-1409 CAN-2002-1472 CAN-2002-0164 CAN-2003-0063 CAN-2003-0071
Created:June 25, 2003 Updated:July 2, 2003
Description: A couple of new vulnerabilities have been found in the xterm application shipped with XFree86. There is yet another "execute arbitrary commands by setting the window title" vulnerability, along with a bug which can allow an attacker to lock up an exterm window.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2003:067-02 2003-07-01
Red Hat RHSA-2003:064-01 2003-06-25
Red Hat RHSA-2003:067-01 2003-06-25
Red Hat RHSA-2003:066-01 2003-06-25

Comments (none posted)

ypserv: denial of service

Package(s):ypserv CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0251
Created:June 25, 2003 Updated:July 11, 2003
Description: From the Red Hat advisory: "A vulnerability has been discovered in the ypserv NIS server prior to version 2.7. If a malicious client queries ypserv via TCP and subsequently ignores the server's response, ypserv will block attempting to send the reply. This results in ypserv failing to respond to other client requests." The fix is up upgrade to version 2.8.0.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200307-04 2003-07-11
Yellow Dog YDU-20030627-1 2003-06-27
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:072 2003-06-27
Red Hat RHSA-2003:173-01 2003-06-25

Comments (none posted)

Updated vulnerabilities

bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries

Package(s):bind glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0651 CAN-2002-0684
Created:July 8, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: The BIND 4.9.8-OW2 patch and BIND 4.9.9 release (and thus 4.9.9-OW1) include fixes for a libc related vulnerability which does not affect Linux. Updates from the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) are available from here.

No release or branch of Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) is known to be affected, due to Olaf Kirch's fixes for this problem getting into the GNU C library more than two years ago.

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

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:050 2002-08-13
Yellow Dog YDU-20020810-3 2002-08-10
Eridani ERISA-2002:035 2002-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2002:133-13 2002-08-08
SCO Group CSSA-2002-034.0 2002-08-05
Yellow Dog YDU-20020801-2 2002-08-01
Eridani ERISA-2002:028 2002-07-25
Red Hat RHSA-2002:139-10 2002-07-22
EnGarde ESA-20020724-018 2002-07-24
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:043 2002-07-16
Trustix 2002-0061 2002-07-15
Gentoo glibc-20020713 2002-07-13
Conectiva CLA-2002:507 2002-07-11
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:026 2002-07-09
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.006 2002-07-04

Comments (1 posted)

BitchX: Denial of service vulnerability

Package(s):BitchX CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0334
Created:June 17, 2003 Updated:June 17, 2003
Description: A Denial Of Service (DoS) vulnerability was discovered in BitchX that would allow a remote attacker to crash BitchX by changing certain channel modes. Read more here and here.
Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:069 2003-06-17

Comments (none posted)

Canna server: exploitable buffer overrun

Package(s):canna CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1158 CAN-2002-1159
Created:December 10, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: Canna is a kana-kanji conversion server which is necessary for Japanese language character input.

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

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-005.0 2003-01-21
Debian DSA-224-1 2002-01-08
Gentoo 200212-8 2002-12-20
Red Hat RHSA-2002:246-18 2002-12-04

Comments (none posted)

CUPS: vulnerability in the CUPS IPP implementation

Package(s):cups CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0195
Created:May 27, 2003 Updated:July 22, 2003
Description: Phil D'Amore of Red Hat discovered a vulnerability in the CUPS IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) implementation. The IPP implementation is single-threaded, which means only one request can be serviced at a time. An attacker could make a partial request that does not time out and therefore creates a denial of service. In order to exploit this bug, an attacker must have the ability to make a TCP connection to the IPP port (by default 631).
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:702 2003-07-22
Gentoo 200306-09 2003-06-14
Debian DSA-317-1 2003-06-11
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:028 2003-06-06
Yellow Dog YDU-20030602-3 2003-06-02
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:062 2003-05-29
Slackware ssa:2003-149-01 2003-05-29
Red Hat RHSA-2003:171-01 2003-05-27

Comments (none posted)

ethereal: buffer and integer overflows

Package(s):ethereal CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0356 CAN-2003-0357
Created:June 12, 2003 Updated:June 18, 2003
Description: Timo Sirainen discovered several vulnerabilities in ethereal, a network traffic analyzer. These include one-byte buffer overflows in the AIM, GIOP Gryphon, OSPF, PPTP, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Rsync, SMB, SMPP, and TSP dissectors, and integer overflows in the Mount and PPP dissectors.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-324-1 2003-06-18
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:067 2003-06-16
Debian DSA-313-1 2003-06-11

Comments (none posted)

Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam

Package(s):fam CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0875
Created:August 19, 2002 Updated:January 5, 2005
Description: "fam" (file alteration monitor) watches files and directories for changes and lets interested applications know when something happens. This package has a flaw in its group handling that blocks some legitimate operations while, at the same time, exposing the names of files that should otherwise be invisible.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2005:005-01 2005-01-05
Debian DSA-154-1 2002-08-15

Comments (none posted)

fetchmail: buffer overflow

Package(s):fetchmail CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1365
Created:December 17, 2002 Updated:October 20, 2003
Description: Versions of fetchmail prior to 6.2.0 have (yet another) buffer overflow vulnerability which can be exploited remotely via a suitably crafted message. See this advisory for details.
Alerts:
Immunix IMNX-2003-7+-023-01 2003-10-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:011 2003-01-27
EnGarde ESA-20030127-002 2003-01-27
SCO Group CSSA-2003-001.0 2003-01-09
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:001 2003-01-02
Debian DSA-216-1 2002-12-24
Red Hat RHSA-2002:293-09 2002-12-17
Conectiva CLA-2002:554 2002-12-16

Comments (3 posted)

Potential remote root exploit in glibc

Package(s):glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0391
Created:August 14, 2002 Updated:June 30, 2003
Description: Felix von Leitner, discovered a potential division by zero bug in code derived from the SunRPC library which is used in glibc.This bug could be exploited to gain unauthorized root access to software linking to glibc.

Updating as soon as practical is a good idea.

Because SunRPC-derived XDR libraries are used by a variety of vendors in a variety of applications, this defect may lead to a number of differing security problems. Exploiting this vulnerability will lead to denial of service, execution of arbitrary code, or the disclosure of sensitive information.

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

Alerts:
Debian DSA-333-1 2003-06-27
Conectiva CLA-2002:535 2002-10-29
Trustix 2002-0070 2002-10-17
EnGarde ESA-20021003-021 2002-10-03
Gentoo glibc-20020927 2002-09-27
Gentoo dietlibc-20020927 2002-09-27
Debian DSA-149-2 2002-09-26
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:061 2002-09-23
Gentoo glibc-20020905 2002-09-05
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:031 2002-08-30
Trustix 2002-0067 2002-08-13
Eridani ERISA-2002:036 2002-08-13
Red Hat RHSA-2002:166-07 2002-08-12
Debian DSA-149-1 2002-08-13

Comments (none posted)

glibc: DNS stub resolvers contain buffer overflow vulnerability

Package(s):glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1146
Created:November 7, 2002 Updated:February 5, 2004
Description: DNS stub resolvers from multiple vendors contain a buffer overflow vulnerability. The impact of this vulnerability appears to be limited to denial of service. (See CERT Vulnerability Note VU#738331)

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).

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:009 2004-02-04
Red Hat RHSA-2002:197-09 2002-11-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:197-06 2002-10-03

Comments (none posted)

gnocatan: buffer overflows, denial of service

Package(s):gnocatan CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0433
Created:June 12, 2003 Updated:June 28, 2003
Description: Bas Wijnen discovered that the gnocatan server is vulnerable to several buffer overflows which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the server system.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200306-17 2003-06-28
Debian DSA-315-1 2003-06-11

Comments (none posted)

gnupg: key validation

Package(s):gnupg CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0255
Created:May 16, 2003 Updated:November 18, 2003
Description: A key validation bug was discovered in the GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) which would cause keys with more then one user ID to trust all user ID's with the amount of trust given to the most-valid user ID.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-034.0 2003-11-17
Conectiva CLA-2003:694 2003-07-11
Yellow Dog YDU-20030602-4 2003-06-02
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:061 2003-05-22
Slackware ssa:2003-141-04 2003-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2003:175-01 2003-05-20
Gentoo 200305-04 2003-05-16
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.029 2003-05-16
EnGarde ESA-20030515-016 2003-05-15

Comments (none posted)

gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash

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

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

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

Comments (none posted)

IMP - SQL injection vulnerability

Package(s):imp CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0025
Created:January 15, 2003 Updated:July 8, 2003
Description: The IMP IMAP server, versions 2.2.8 and prior, is vulnerable to SQL injection; see this advisory for details. Version 3.x is not vulnerable to this problem.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:690 2003-07-08
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:0008 2003-02-18
Debian DSA-229-2 2003-01-15

Comments (1 posted)

kde: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):kde CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0204
Created:April 10, 2003 Updated:June 30, 2003
Description: The KDE Security team has issued an advisory on a vulnerability present in all versions of KDE that allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands under your account. KDE 3.0.5b and KDE 3.1.1a have been released to address this problem. For KDE 2.2.2 patches to the KDE 2.2.2 sources have been made available.

KDE uses Ghostscript software for processing of PostScript (PS) and PDF files in a way that allows for the execution of arbitrary commands that can be contained in such files.

An attacker can prepare a malicious PostScript or PDF file which will provide the attacker with access to the victim's account and privileges when the victim opens this malicious file for viewing or when the victim browses a directory containing such malicious file and has file previews enabled.

An attacker can provide malicious files remotely to a victim in an e-mail, as part of a webpage, via an ftp server and possible other means.

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:668 2003-06-30
Red Hat RHSA-2003:002-01 2003-05-12
Debian DSA-296-1 2003-04-30
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:049-1 2003-04-24
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:0026 2003-04-24
Debian DSA-293-1 2003-04-23
Slackware sl-1050682024 2003-04-18
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:049 2003-04-17
Sorcerer SORCERER2003-04-12 2003-04-12
Debian DSA-284-1 2003-04-12
Gentoo 200304-05 2003-04-11
Gentoo 200304-04 2003-04-10

Comments (none posted)

kernel - ptrace-related vulnerability

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0127
Created:March 17, 2003 Updated:June 30, 2003
Description: Versions 2.2.x and 2.4.x of the Linux kernel contain a vulnerability in ptrace() which may be exploited by a local user to obtain root access. This announcement contains the details and a patch for 2.4.20. For 2.2 users, 2.2.25 has been released which contains the fix.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-336-2 2003-06-29
Debian DSA-336-1 2003-06-29
Debian DSA-332-1 2003-06-27
Red Hat RHSA-2003:098-03 2003-06-02
SCO Group CSSA-2003-020.0 2003-05-09
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:038-1 2003-04-09
Red Hat RHSA-2003:135-00 2003-04-08
Conectiva CLA-2003:618 2003-04-07
Debian DSA-276-1 2003-04-03
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:039 2003-03-27
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:038 2003-03-27
Debian DSA-270-1 2003-03-27
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:021 2003-03-25
Gentoo 200303-17 2003-03-21
Sorcerer SORCERER2003-03-19 2003-03-20
Red Hat RHSA-2003:088-01 2003-03-20
EnGarde ESA-20030318-009 2003-03-18
Trustix 2003-0007 2003-03-18
Red Hat RHSA-2003:098-00 2003-03-17

Comments (none posted)

kernel 2.4 - two new vulnerabilities

Package(s):kernel CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0244 CAN-2003-0246
Created:May 14, 2003 Updated:July 25, 2003
Description: The 2.4.20 (and prior) kernel contains a couple of vulnerabilities that are worth fixing.
  • The ioperm() system call doesn't perform proper checking, allowing a local user to manipulate arbitrary I/O ports.

  • The networking code contains a remotely exploitable denial of service condition; see the May 24 Security Page for details.

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:066-2 2003-07-25
Conectiva CLA-2003:701 2003-07-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:066-1 2003-07-21
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:074 2003-07-15
Slackware SSA:2003-168-01 2003-06-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:066 2003-06-11
Debian DSA-312-1 2003-06-09
Debian DSA-311-1 2003-06-08
Red Hat RHSA-2003:187-01 2003-06-03
Red Hat RHSA-2003:145-01 2003-05-27
EnGarde ESA-20030515-017 2003-05-15
Red Hat RHSA-2003:172-00 2003-05-14

Comments (2 posted)

kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability

Package(s):kernel-utils CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0019
Created:February 7, 2003 Updated:January 21, 2005
Description: The kernel-utils package contains several utilities that can be used to control the kernel or machine hardware. In Red Hat Linux 8.0 this package contains user mode linux (UML) utilities.

The uml_net utility in kernel-utils packages with Red Hat Linux 8.0 was incorrectly shipped setuid root. This could allow local users to control certain network interfaces, add and remove arp entries and routes, and put interfaces in and out of promiscuous mode.

All users of the kernel-utils package should update to these packages that contain a version of uml_net that is not setuid root.

Alternatively, as a work-around to this vulnerability issue the following command as root:

chmod -s /usr/bin/uml_net

Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2003:056-08 2003-02-07

Comments (none posted)

kopete: vulnerabiliy in GnuPG plugin

Package(s):kopete CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0256
Created:May 8, 2003 Updated:June 27, 2003
Description: A vulnerability was discovered in versions of kopete prior to 0.6.2. Kopete is a KDE instant messenger client. This vulnerabiliy is in the GnuPG plugin that allows for users to send each other GPG-encrypted instant messages. The plugin passes encrypted messages to gpg, but does no checking to sanitize the commandline passed to gpg. This can allow remote users to execute arbitrary code, with the permissions of the user running kopete, on the local system.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:665 2003-06-27
Gentoo 200305-03 2003-05-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:055 2003-05-08

Comments (none posted)

libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow

Package(s):libpng, libpng3 CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1363
Created:December 19, 2002 Updated:July 14, 2004
Description: Glenn Randers-Pehrson discovered a problem in connection with 16-bit samples from libpng, an interface for reading and writing PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format files. The starting offsets for the loops are calculated incorrectly which causes a buffer overrun beyond the beginning of the row buffer.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200407-06 2004-07-08
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2004.030 2004-07-06
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:063 2004-06-29
Whitebox WBSA-2004:249-01 2004-06-21
Fedora FEDORA-2004-176 2004-06-18
Fedora FEDORA-2004-174 2004-06-18
Fedora FEDORA-2004-175 2004-06-18
Fedora FEDORA-2004-173 2004-06-18
Red Hat RHSA-2004:249-01 2004-06-18
Conectiva CLA-2003:564 2003-01-23
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:008 2003-01-20
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.001 2003-01-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20030114-2 2002-01-14
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:0004 2003-01-14
Red Hat RHSA-2003:006-06 2003-01-09
Debian DSA-213-1 2002-12-19

Comments (none posted)

lynx: CRLF injection vulnerability

Package(s):lynx CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1405
Created:November 19, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: If lynx is given a url with some special characters on the command line, it will include faked headers in the HTTP query. This feature can be used to force scripts (that use Lynx for downloading files) to access the wrong site on a web server with multiple virtual hosts.

CAN-2002-1405

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:720 2003-08-11
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:023 2003-02-24
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.011 2003-02-18
Red Hat RHSA-2003:029-06 2003-02-12
Trustix 2002-0085 2002-12-19
Debian DSA-210-1 2002-12-13
SCO Group CSSA-2002-049.0 2002-11-18

Comments (none posted)

lyskom-server: denial of service

Package(s):lyskom-server CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0366
Created:June 13, 2003 Updated:June 17, 2003
Description: Calle Dybedahl discovered a bug in lyskom-server which could result in a denial of service where an unauthenticated user could cause the server to become unresponsive as it processes a large query.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-318-1 2003-06-12

Comments (none posted)

perl-MailTools: remote command execution

Package(s):MailTools CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1271
Created:November 5, 2002 Updated:September 19, 2003
Description: The SuSE Security Team reviewed critical Perl modules, including the Mail::Mailer package. This package contains a security hole which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands in certain circumstances. This is due to the usage of mailx as default mailer which allows commands to be embedded in the mail body.

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.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-386-1 2003-09-18
Gentoo 200302-01 2003-02-02
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:076 2002-11-07
Gentoo 200211-001 2002-11-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:041 2002-11-05

Comments (none posted)

man: format string exploit

Package(s):man CVE #(s):
Created:June 16, 2003 Updated:June 17, 2003
Description: Versions of man 1.5l and below contain a format string vulnerability. The vulnerability occurs when man uses an optional catalog file, supplied by the NLSPATH/LANG environmental variables. See the full advisory for more details.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200306-06 2003-06-14

Comments (none posted)

mikmod: buffer overflow

Package(s):mikmod CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0427
Created:June 16, 2003 Updated:June 16, 2005
Description: Ingo Saitz discovered a bug in mikmod whereby a long filename inside an archive file can overflow a buffer when the archive is being read by mikmod.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2005-405 2005-06-16
Red Hat RHSA-2005:506-01 2005-06-13
Fedora FEDORA-2005-404 2005-06-09
Gentoo 200307-01 2003-07-02
Debian DSA-320-1 2003-06-13

Comments (none posted)

Nessus NASL scripting engine security issues

Package(s):nessus CVE #(s):
Created:May 27, 2003 Updated:August 12, 2004
Description: Some some vulnerabilities exsist in the Nessus NASL scripting engine. To exploit these flaws, an attacker would need to have a valid Nessus account as well as the ability to upload arbitrary Nessus plugins in the Nessus server (this option is disabled by default) or he/she would need to trick a user somehow into running a specially crafted nasl script. Read the full advisory for additional information.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200305-10 2003-05-27

Comments (none posted)

nethack: buffer overflow

Package(s):nethack, slashem, falconseye CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0358 CAN-2003-0359
Created:February 18, 2003 Updated:July 15, 2003
Description: Overflowing a buffer in nethack may lead to privilege escalation to games uid.

Read the the full advisory for the details.

Note that falconseye does not contain the file permission error CAN-2003-0359 which affected some other nethack packages.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-350-1 2003-07-15
Debian DSA-316-3 2003-06-17
Debian DSA-316-2 2003-06-11
Debian DSA-316-1 2003-06-11
Gentoo 200302-08 2003-02-18

Comments (none posted)

netscape-flash: buffer overflow

Package(s):netscape-flash CVE #(s):
Created:March 10, 2003 Updated:June 20, 2003
Description: Potentially exploitable buffer overflows exist in the Macromedia Flash Player. The full advisory is here. "The cumulative security patch is available today and addresses the potential for exploits surrounding buffer overflows (read/write) and sandbox integrity within the player, which might allow malicious users to gain access to a user's computer. The possibility of running native code on a users machine is a theoretical exploit, and extremely difficult to execute in practice. There are no known examples of running such native code from Macromedia Flash movies; however, even though this issue is difficult and theoretical in nature only, we are encouraging users to upgrade."
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2003:026-01 2003-06-20
Gentoo 200303-9 2003-03-09

Comments (none posted)

net-snmp: denial of service vulnerability

Package(s):net-snmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1170
Created:December 17, 2002 Updated:November 7, 2003
Description: The SNMP daemon included in the Net-SNMP package versions 5.0.1 through 5.0.4 can be caused to crash if it is sent a specially crafted packet.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:778 2003-11-07
Red Hat RHSA-2002:228-11 2002-12-17

Comments (none posted)

noweb: insecure temporary files

Package(s):noweb CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0381
Created:June 17, 2003 Updated:June 28, 2003
Description: Jakob Lell discovered a bug in the 'noroff' script included in noweb whereby a temporary file was created insecurely. During a review, several other instances of this problem were found and fixed. Any of these bugs could be exploited by a local user to overwrite arbitrary files owned by the user invoking the script.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200306-16 2003-06-28
Debian DSA-323-1 2003-06-16

Comments (none posted)

openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure

Package(s):openssh CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0190
Created:May 2, 2003 Updated:November 30, 2004
Description: From the advisory: "During a pen-test we stumbled across a nasty bug in OpenSSH-portable with PAM support enabled (via the --with-pam configure script switch). This bug allows a remote attacker to identify valid users on vulnerable systems, through a simple timing attack. The vulnerability is easy to exploit and may have high severity, if combined with poor password policies and other security problems that allow local privilege escalation."
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-34-1 2004-11-30
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.035 2003-08-06
Red Hat RHSA-2003:222-01 2003-07-29
Gentoo 200305-02 2003-05-13
Gentoo 200305-01 2002-03-05

Comments (1 posted)

pam_xauth: root exploit

Package(s):pam_xauth CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1160
Created:February 13, 2003 Updated:July 10, 2003
Description: The pam_xauth module is used to forward xauth information from user to user in applications such as 'su'.

Andreas Beck discovered that versions of pam_xauth supplied with Red Hat Linux since version 7.1 would forward authorization information from the root account to unprivileged users. This could be used by a local attacker to gain access to an administrator's X session. In order to exploit this vulnerability, the attacker would have to get the administrator, as root, to use su to the account belonging to the attacker.

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:693 2003-07-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:017-1 2003-04-28
Red Hat RHSA-2003:035-10 2003-02-12

Comments (none posted)

PHP: vulnerability in mail function

Package(s):php CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0985 CAN-2002-0986
Created:November 13, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: Two vulnerabilities exists in the mail() PHP function. The first one allows the execution of any program/script bypassing safe_mode restriction, the second one may give an open-relay script if the mail() function is not carefully used in PHP scripts. See this Bugtraq report for more details. Note that this is a different vulnerability than the previous PHP mail() problem, which affected versions through 4.1.0.

CAN-2002-0985
CAN-2002-0986

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-008.0 2003-03-04
Gentoo 200211-005 2002-11-20
EnGarde ESA-20021122-031 2002-11-22
Conectiva CLA-2002:545 2002-11-13
Red Hat RHSA-2002:213-06 2002-11-11

Comments (none posted)

PostgreSQL - more buffer overflows

Package(s):postgresql CVE #(s):
Created:February 12, 2003 Updated:November 7, 2003
Description: A new set of buffer overflows has been discovered in PostgreSQL 7.2.2; they affect the circle_poly(), path_encode(), and path_addr() functions. Exploiting these overflows requires that the attacker first obtain a connection to the PostgreSQL server.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-397-1 2003-11-07
Immunix IMNX-2003-7+-005-01 2003-04-08
Trustix 2003-0004 2003-02-20
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:062-1 2003-02-11

Comments (1 posted)

Local arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Python

Package(s):python CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1119
Created:August 28, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: Zack Weinberg discovered that os._execvpe from os.py uses a predictable name which could lead to execution of arbitrary code. According to the Debian advisory, the problem was present in Python versions 1.5, 2.1 and 2.2.

CAN-2002-1119

Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:202-33 2003-02-12
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.006 2003-01-23
Red Hat RHSA-2002:202-25 2003-01-21
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:082-1 2002-12-09
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:082 2002-11-25
SCO Group CSSA-2002-045.0 2002-11-14
Trustix 2002-0073 2002-10-17
Gentoo python-20021003 2002-10-03
Conectiva CLA-2002:527 2002-10-01
Debian DSA-159-2 2002-09-09
Debian DSA-159-1 2002-08-28

Comments (none posted)

radiusd-cistron: possible remote system compromise

Package(s):radiusd-cistron CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0450
Created:June 13, 2003 Updated:July 11, 2003
Description: The package radiusd-cistron is an implementation of the RADIUS protocol. Unfortunately the RADIUS server handles large NAS numbers incorrectly. This leads to overwriting internal memory of the server process and may be abused to gain remote access to the system the RADIUS server is running on.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200307-03 2003-07-11
Conectiva CLA-2003:664 2003-06-27
Debian DSA-321-1 2003-06-13
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:030 2003-06-13

Comments (none posted)

Multiple-use vulnerability in Safe.pm

Package(s):Safe.pm CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1323
Created:October 9, 2002 Updated:February 20, 2004
Description: usePerl has a description of a vulnerability in the Safe.pm Perl module. It seems that if a Safe compartment is used more than once, it ceases to be safe. The problem is fixed in Safe 2.08.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2004-007.0 2004-02-20
Gentoo 200212-6 2002-12-20
Trustix 2002-0087 2002-12-19
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.014 2002-12-16
Debian DSA-208-1 2002-12-12

Comments (none posted)

File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip

Package(s):tar unzip CVE #(s):CAN-2001-1267 CAN-2001-1268 CAN-2001-1269 CAN-2002-0399
Created:October 1, 2002 Updated:April 10, 2006
Description: The tar utility does not properly filter file names containing "../", meaning that a hostile archive can, if unpacked by an unsuspecting user, overwrite any file that is writable by that user. GNU tar versions 1.13.19 and earlier are vulnerable; unzip through version 5.42 has the same vulnerability.
Alerts:
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:183571-1 2006-04-04
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0195-01 2006-02-21
Conectiva CLA-2002:538 2002-10-29
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:066 2002-10-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:065 2002-10-10
EnGarde ESA-20021003-022 2002-10-03
Gentoo unzip-20021001 2002-10-01
Gentoo tar-20021001 2002-10-01
Red Hat RHSA-2002:096-24 2002-09-18

Comments (1 posted)

Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability

Package(s):telnet Telnet netkit-telnet-ssl kerberos telnetd netkit-telnet nkitb/nkitserv/telnetd krb5 CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:October 5, 2004
Description: This vulnerability, originally thought to be confined to BSD-derived systems, was first covered in the July 26th Security Summary. It is now known that Linux telnet daemons are vulnerable as well.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200410-03 2004-10-05
Yellow Dog YDU-20010810-2 2001-08-10
Yellow Dog YDU-20010810-1 2001-08-10
SuSE SuSE-SA:2001:029 2001-09-03
Slackware sl-997726350 2001-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2001:100-02 2001-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2001:099-09 2002-02-07
Red Hat RHSA-2001:099-06 2001-08-09
Progeny PROGENY-SA-2001-27 2001-08-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:093 2001-12-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:068 2001-08-13
HP HPSBTL0202-023 2002-02-12
Debian DSA-075-2 2001-08-14
Debian DSA-075-1 2001-08-14
Conectiva CLA-2001:413 2001-08-24
SCO Group CSSA-2001-030.0 2001-08-10

Comments (none posted)

typespeed: buffer overflow

Package(s):typespeed CVE #(s):
Created:January 1, 2003 Updated:June 17, 2003
Description: A problem has been discovered in the typespeed, a game that lets you measure your typematic speed. By overflowing a buffer a local attacker could execute arbitrary commands under the group id games.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-322-1 2003-06-16
Debian DSA-217-1 2002-12-27

Comments (none posted)

vim - modeline vulnerability

Package(s):vim CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1377
Created:January 16, 2003 Updated:February 10, 2004
Description: VIM allows a user to set the modeline differently for each edited text file by placing special comments in the files. Georgi Guninski found that these comments can be carefully crafted in order to call external programs. This could allow an attacker to create a text file such that when it is opened arbitrary commands are executed.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2004:812 2004-02-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:012 2003-02-03
Yellow Dog YDU-20030127-3 2003-01-27
Gentoo 200301-13 2003-01-22
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.003 2003-01-21
Red Hat RHSA-2002:297-17 2003-01-15

Comments (4 posted)

vixie-cron: Local vulnerability

Package(s):vixie-cron CVE #(s):CVE-2001-0559
Created:April 17, 2003 Updated:October 3, 2003
Description: From the ISS advisory: "Vixie Cron is a scheduling daemon that ships with several Linux distributions. Vixie Cron version 3.0pl1 could allow a local attacker to gain root privileges. Crontab fails to properly drop privileges in certain cases after a crontab modification operation. A local attacker could exploit this vulnerability to gain root privileges on the system since crontab is installed setuid root."

Note: this vulnerability is dated May 07 2001, and was first mentioned in LWN on the May 10, 2001 security page.

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:758 2003-10-03
Conectiva CLA-2003:757 2003-10-03
Conectiva CLA-2003:628 2003-04-17

Comments (none posted)

webmin: session ID spoofing

Package(s):webmin CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0101
Created:June 13, 2003 Updated:November 18, 2003
Description: miniserv.pl in the webmin package does not properly handle metacharacters, such as line feeds and carriage returns, in Base64-encoded strings used in Basic authentication. This vulnerability allows remote attackers to spoof a session ID, and thereby gain root privileges.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-035.0 2003-11-17
Debian DSA-319-1 2003-06-12

Comments (none posted)

wget:directory traversal bug

Package(s):wget CVE #(s):CAN-2002-1344
Created:December 10, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: Versions of wget prior to 1.8.2-4 contain a bug that permits a malicious FTP server to create or overwrite files anywhere on the local file system.

FTP clients must check to see if an FTP server's response to the NLST command includes any directory information along with the list of filenames required by the FTP protocol (RFC 959, section 4.1.3).

If the FTP client fails to do so, a malicious FTP server can send filenames beginning with '/' or containing '/../' which can be used to direct a vulnerable FTP client to write files (such as .forward, .rhosts, .shosts, etc.) that can then be used for later attacks against the client machine.

See also this Bugtraq article from 1997.

CAN-2002-1344

Alerts:
Immunix IMNX-2003-7+-011-01 2003-06-03
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2003.007 2003-01-23
SCO Group CSSA-2003-003.0 2003-01-16
Gentoo 200212-7 2002-12-20
Trustix 2002-0089 2002-12-19
Conectiva CLA-2002:552 2002-12-13
Debian DSA-209-1 2002-12-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:086 2002-12-11
Red Hat RHSA-2002:229-10 2002-12-04

Comments (none posted)

Wwwoffle remote privilege escalation vulnerability

Package(s):wwwoffle CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0818
Created:August 14, 2002 Updated:October 1, 2003
Description: The wwwoffle web proxy incorrectly processes HTTP PUT and POST requests with negative Content Length values. "It is believed that an attacker could exploit this bug to gain remote wwwrun access to the system wwwoffled is running on."

CAN-2002-0818

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-048.0 2002-11-18
Debian DSA-144-1 2002-08-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:029 2002-08-01

Comments (none posted)

xinetd: Memory leak in xinetd 2.3.10

Package(s):xinetd CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0211
Created:May 13, 2003 Updated:November 13, 2003
Description: Xinetd is a 'master server' that is used to to accept service connection requests and start the appropriate servers.

Because of a programming error, memory was allocated and never freed if a connection was refused for any reason. An attacker could exploit this flaw to crash the xinetd server, rendering all services it controls unavailable.

In addition, other flaws in xinetd could cause incorrect operation in certain unusual server configurations.

All users of xinetd are advised to update to xinetd-2.3.11 which is not vulnerable to these issues.

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2003:782 2003-11-12
Yellow Dog YDU-20030602-1 2003-06-02
Gentoo 200305-08 2003-05-19
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:056 2003-05-14
Red Hat RHSA-2003:160-01 2003-05-13

Comments (none posted)

Xpdf - command execution vulnerability

Package(s):Xpdf CVE #(s):CAN-2003-0434
Created:June 18, 2003 Updated:July 24, 2003
Description: Xpdf suffers from the same sort of "execute arbitrary code embedded in a malicious document" vulnerability that is so widespread in other PostScript and PDF interpreters.
Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:071-1 2003-07-23
Yellow Dog YDU-20030723-1 2003-07-23
Red Hat RHSA-2003:196-02 2003-07-17
Conectiva CLA-2003:674 2003-07-04
Mandrake MDKSA-2003:071 2003-06-27
Gentoo 200306-11 2003-06-25
Yellow Dog YDU-20030620-1 2003-06-20
Red Hat RHSA-2003:196-01 2003-06-18

Comments (none posted)

Resources

Report: International Research on Privacy for Electronic Government

Joichi Ito has, with many helpers, compiled a report on privacy and privacy-enhancing technologies which is intended to help with the planning of electronic government initiatives in Japan. It's a large thing, being several hundred pages available in PDF format. It is well worth a look, though, as a comprehensive summary of the privacy situation in several parts of the world.

Comments (none posted)

Linux Advisory Watch

The June 20 issue of the Linux Advisory Watch newsletter from LinuxSecurity.com is available.

Full Story (comments: none)

Events

Security Symposium, Aug 4-8, Washington DC

The 12th Usenix Security Symposium is scheduled for August 4 through 8 in Washington, DC. Participants include Steve Bellovin, Bill Cheswick, Niels Provos, Kevin Fu, Peter Gutmann, Dan Boneh, David Farber and Mark Seiden. Registration is open now for interested participants.

Full Story (comments: none)

Industrial Experience in Security at ACM CCS

The Tenth ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security is happening in Washington, DC, on October 28 and 29. This year there will be a special session on "industrial experience in security." "This special session in an otherwise academic conference is an opportunity for security practitioners in industry to tell academics how it's really done: what works, and what doesn't. Submissions are only 3 pages long, and so should impose minimal burden on those submitting a paper." Papers are due June 27 (soon!).

Full Story (comments: none)

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