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Security

Welcome to the new LWN.net Security Page

Our first site code upgrade in nearly four years introduces an integrated security alert and vulnerability database. Our archive of security alerts dating back to July, 2001 now lives in a PostgreSQL relational database. Vulnerabilities and alerts are actually linked to each other. Recent alerts and vulnerabilities use Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) numbers to uniquely identify each vulnerability.

Today you can browse alerts and vulnerabilities using the links at the top of each page. When viewing an alert, you can view the corresponding vulnerability description with a mouse click.

In the future expect, and please continue to suggest, ways for us to better provide you with the security information you seek.

Comments (none posted)

US TurboLinux Security Severely Out of Date (iDEFENSE Labs)

iDEFENSE Labs has issued a security advisory for the US TurboLinux distribution.

The collective security weakness of the outstanding issues listed below is staggering. The following is a list of the most serious problems for which most other Linux vendors have provided updates on their US sites. It represents the outstanding security problems associated with the limited TurboLinux distributions and updates that have been available on the US sites only.

LWN has pointed out in the past that Turbolinux has not been serious about security updates. With luck this advisory - or, perhaps, the UnitedLinux effort - will help get this distributor back on track.

Comments (1 posted)

Brief items

Unique Preventative IDS for Linux

Scott Wimer, Chief Technology Officer of Cylant, dicusses preventive security in this paper.

The recent vulnerabilities with OpenSSH software demonstrate that even intensive auditing cannot necessarily root out all the defects from software. As software systems become larger and more complex, intensive auditing becomes more expensive and more difficult. Software audits simply cannot be relied upon to find all of the security vulnerabilities in any given system.

Full Story (comments: 7)

Biometric Access Protection Devices and their Programs Put to the Test (c't)

C't has published a study of eleven biometric access controls intended to prevent unauthorized access. "In our attempts at outfoxing the protective programs and devices we have concentrated on the first method: direct attempts at deceiving the systems with the aid of obvious procedures (such as the reactivation of latent images) and obvious feature forgeries (photographs, videos, silicon fingerprints)."

Also see Bruce Schneier's previously published CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter for May for a look at a technique for fooling fingerprint scanners with fake fingers made of gelatin.

Comments (none posted)

Security reports

Download Sites Hacked, Source Code Backdoored (Security Focus)

Brian McWilliams reports on the recent contamination of Fragroute with a backdoor. "According to program developer Dug Song, the source code to the Dsniff, Fragroute, and Fragrouter security tools was contaminated on May 17th after an attacker gained unauthorized access to his site, Monkey.org."

Note: Copies of Dsniff, Fragroute or Fragrouter downloaded from Monkey.org between May 17th and May 24th are contaminated and require replacement. For more details, see Dug Song's post to bugtraq about the incident.

Full Story (comments: none)

OpenSSH 3.2.3 released

Following on the heels of the last release, OpenSSH version 3.2.3 has been announced. This version fixes a few bugs that showed up in version 3.2.2.

Full Story (comments: none)

Ethereal 0.9.4 released

Ethereal 0.9.4 was released on May 19, 2002 fixing four potential security issues in Ethereal 0.9.3:
  • The SMB dissector could potentially dereference a NULL pointer in two cases.
  • The X11 dissector could potentially overflow a buffer while parsing keysyms.
  • The DNS dissector could go into an infinite loop while reading a malformed packet.
  • The GIOP dissector could potentially allocate large amounts of memory.

No known exploits exist "in the wild" at the present time for any of these issues.

Comments (none posted)

Information Disclosure Vulnerability in IDS 0.8x

IDS is a CGI script that generates a multi-gallery photo album for a website on the fly. IDS 0.8x is reported to have a directory disclosure vulnerability.

Full Story (comments: none)

CGIscript.net - csPassword.cgi has multiple vulnerabilities

Steve Gustin has reported multiple vulnerabilities in the csPassword.cgi script from CGIscript.net "Make sure you only allow trusted users to use the csPassword application and make sure your web server in configured to deny requests for .ht* and *.tmp files."

Full Story (comments: none)

Caldera Security Advisory - Volution Manager

Volution Manager stores the unencrypted Directory Administrator's password in the /etc/ldap/slapd.conf file. This vulnerability will be corrected in the next release of Volution Manager.

Full Story (comments: none)

(Proprietary product) Informix SE-7.25 Local Vulnerability

A buffer overflow vulnerability was reported in Informix SE-7.25 if INFORMIXDIR enviroment variable is defined with a size greater than 2023 bytes.

Full Story (comments: none)

New vulnerabilities

Denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of BIND

Package(s):bind CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0400
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:August 19, 2002
Description: Here is an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) regarding the denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of the BIND nameserver, up to 9.2.1. An attacker can send a properly crafted packet which triggers a check within BIND and causes it to shut down. The vulnerability can not be exploited for any purpose beyond denial of service, but that is bad enough; if you are running BIND 9, an upgrade is probably a good idea.

Note that many or most systems out there will still be running BIND 8, and thus will not be vulnerable.

News articles on the vulnerability appear in the Register and Network World Fusion News.

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:038-1 2002-08-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-6 2002-06-06
Conectiva CLA-2002:494 2002-06-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:021 2002-06-06
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:038 2002-06-04
Red Hat RHSA-2002:105-09 2002-06-04

Comments (none posted)

Ghostscript arbitrary command execution vulnerability

Package(s):ghostscript CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0363
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 12, 2002
Description: Ghostscript may be used to execute arbitrary commands with a maliciously formed PostScript file. Since ghostscript is frequently used while printing documents, updating is strongly recommended.

The vulnerability has been fixed in the 6.53 source release of GNU Ghostscript.

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-026.0 2002-06-11
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-4 2002-06-06
Eridani ERISA-2002:022 2002-06-05
Red Hat RHSA-2002:083-22 2002-06-03

Comments (none posted)

Mailman 2.0.11 fixes two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities

Package(s):mailman CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0388
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:August 28, 2002
Description: Barry A. Warsaw announced the release of Mailman 2.0.11 "which fixes two cross-site scripting exploits, one reported by "office" in the admin login page, and another reported by Tristan Roddis in the Pipermail index summaries. It is recommended that all sites upgrade their 2.0.x systems to this version."
Alerts:
Debian DSA-147-2 2002-08-26
Debian DSA-147-1 2002-08-08
Red Hat RHSA-2002:101-06 2002-06-27
Red Hat RHSA-2002:099-04 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:100-03 2002-06-06
Conectiva CLA-2002:489 2002-05-24

Comments (none posted)

String format bug in pam_ldap logging

Package(s):nss_ldap CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0374
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:October 29, 2002
Description: The nss_ldap package includes the pam_ldap module for authenticating a user with an LDAP database. Pam_ldap versions prior to 144 have a string format bug in the logging mechanism.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-041.0 2002-10-28
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-2 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:084-17 2002-05-26
Eridani ERISA-2002:019 2002-05-28

Comments (none posted)

Malformed NFS packet buffer overflow vulnerability in tcpdump

Package(s):tcpdump CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0380
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:October 9, 2002
Description: A buffer overflow in tcpdump can be triggered by a bad NFS packet when tracing the network. Unmodified tcpdump versions 3.6.2 and earlier are vulnerable.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:094-16 2002-10-04
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-3 2002-06-06
Trustix 2002-0055 2002-06-05
SCO Group CSSA-2002-025.0 2002-06-04
Conectiva CLA-2002:491 2002-06-05
Red Hat RHSA-2002:094-08 2002-05-29
Eridani ERISA-2002:020 2002-05-30

Comments (none posted)

Uucp authentication agent, in.uucdp, bad string termination

Package(s):uucp CVE #(s):
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 5, 2002
Description: The in.uucpd authentication agent in the uucp package does not properly terminate some long input strings.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-129-1 2002-05-27

Comments (none posted)

xchat IC server based dns query vulnerability

Package(s):xchat CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0382
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:September 24, 2002
Description: A malicious IRC server may return a response to a /dns query that executes arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user running XChat. Versions of XChat prior to 1.8.9 are vulnerable.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2002:526 2002-09-23
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:051 2002-08-14
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-5 2002-06-06
Eridani ERISA-2002:021 2002-06-05
Red Hat RHSA-2002:097-08 2002-06-04

Comments (none posted)

Updated vulnerabilities

Ethereal packet handling vulnerabilities

Package(s):ethereal CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0353
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 12, 2002
Description: Ethereal 0.9.3 fixed three packet handling vulnerabilities present in 0.9.2 when it was released by the ethereal team on March 30th. The PROTOS test suite found some flaws in SNMP and LDAP protocols support. Malformed packets could also crash ethereal 0.9.2 due to a ASN.1 zero-length g_malloc problem. The zlib "double free" vulnerability was addressed by the updates for that bug from many distributors. (First LWN report: May 2).

Update: The May 19, 2002 release of Ethereal 0.9.4 fixes four potential security issues in Ethereal 0.9.3.Please see the new vulnerability for more information.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-130-1 2002-06-01
Conectiva CLA-2002:474 2002-04-25

Comments (none posted)

Remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability in fetchmail

Package(s):fetchmail CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0146
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 18, 2002
Description: Fetchmail versions prior to 5.9.10 have a buffer overflow vulnerability that may be exploited by a malicious IMAP server. The fetchmail client allocated memory to store the sizes of the messages it is attempting to retrieve based on a message count provided by the IMAP server. A malicious IMAP server could provide an artifically large message count to force the fetchmail process to write data outside of the allocated memory. (First LWN report: May 9).
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-027.0 2002-06-17
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-2 2002-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2002:047-10 2002-05-20
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:036 2002-05-28
Eridani ERISA-2002:016 2002-05-22

Comments (none posted)

UW imapd remotely exploitable buffer overflow

Package(s):imap CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0379
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:December 20, 2002
Description: UW imapd versions 2000c and prior allow remote authenticated users to execute code via a buffer overflow. A malicious user can craft a request to run commands on the server under their UID and GID. (First LWN report: May 23).
Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:048 2002-12-20
Trustix 2002-0054 2002-06-06
EnGarde ESA-20020607-013 2002-06-07
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-1 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:092-11 2002-05-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:034 2002-05-27
Eridani ERISA-2002:018 2002-05-25
Conectiva CLA-2002:487 2002-05-24
SCO Group CSSA-2002-021.0 2002-05-15

Comments (2 posted)

OpenSSH 3.2.2 fixes multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):openssh CVE #(s):
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 5, 2002
Description: The OpenSSH developers have released OpenSSH 3.2.2. Security fixes in this release are: "
- fixed buffer overflow in Kerberos/AFS token passing
- fixed overflow in Kerberos client code
- sshd no longer auto-enables Kerberos/AFS
- experimental support for privilege separation [...]
- only accept RSA keys of size SSH_RSA_MINIMUM_MODULUS_SIZE (768) or larger"

(First LWN report: May 23).
Alerts:
Eridani ERISA-2002:017 2002-05-23

Comments (none posted)

UTF8 interaction bug in the perl-Digest-MD5 module

Package(s):perl-Digest-MD5 CVE #(s):
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:June 5, 2002
Description: Versions prior to 2.20 of the perl-Digest-MD5 module have a bug in the UTF8 interaction with perl that produces UTF8 strings with improper MD5 digests. (First LWN report: May 16).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:081-06 2002-05-10
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:035 2002-05-28

Comments (none posted)

Heap corruption vulnerability in at

Package(s):at at, sudo, xchat CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0004
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:May 15, 2003
Description: The at command has a potentially exploitable heap corruption bug. (First LWN report:  January 17th).
Alerts:
EnGarde ESA-20030515-015 2003-05-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-9 2002-01-27
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:003 2001-01-16
Slackware sl-1011706104 2002-01-22
Red Hat RHSA-2002:015-15 2002-02-07
Red Hat RHSA-2002:015-13 2002-01-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:007 2002-01-18
Debian DSA-102-2 2002-01-18
Debian DSA-102-1 2002-01-16

Comments (none posted)

DHCP remotely exploitable format string vulnerability

Package(s):dhcp/dhcp-server dhcp CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:June 20, 2002
Description: The May 8, 2000 release of ISC DHCP 3.0p1 fixes this serious vulnerability in ISC DHCPD 3.0 to 3.0.1rc8 inclusive.

We encourage dhcp users to upgrade, disable dhcp or, at a minimum, consider using ingress filtering as described in the CERT advisory. (First LWN report: May 16).

Note: Distributions which use version 2 of ISC DHCP, such as Red Hat Linux, are not vulnerable.

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-028.0 2002-06-19
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:037-1 2002-05-30
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:019 2002-05-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:037 2002-05-29
Conectiva CLA-2002:483 2002-05-09

Comments (none posted)

GNU fileutils race condition

Package(s):fileutils ucdsnmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0435
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:May 16, 2003
Description: A race condition in rm may cause the root user to delete the whole filesystem. The problem exists in the version of rm in fileutils 4.1 stable and 4.1.6 development version. A patch is available. (First LWN report: May 2).
Alerts:
Immunix IMNX-2003-7+-010-01 2003-05-16
Red Hat RHSA-2003:015-05 2003-02-12
Trustix 2002-0052 2002-06-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:012 2002-04-08
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:031 2002-05-16
SCO Group CSSA-2002-018.1 2002-05-13

Comments (none posted)

Buffer overflow problem in glibc

Package(s):glibc glibc/shlibs, glibc, nscd CVE #(s):CAN-2001-0886
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:July 14, 2002
Description: The glibc filename globbing code has a buffer overflow problem. For those who are interested, Global InterSec LLC has provided a detailed description of this vulnerability. This problem was first reported by LWN on December 20th.
Alerts:
Trustix 2001-0029 2001-12-19
SuSE SuSE-SA:2001:046 2001-12-24
Slackware sl-1010856829 2002-01-12
Red Hat RHSA-2001:160-09 2001-12-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:095 2001-12-19
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:095-1 2002-01-08
Immunix IMNX-2001-70-037-01 2001-12-19
EnGarde ESA-20011217-01 2001-12-17
Debian DSA-103-1 2002-01-13
Conectiva CLA-2002:447 2002-01-03

Comments (2 posted)

Buffer overflow in groff

Package(s):groff CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0003
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:December 9, 2002
Description: The groff package has a buffer overflow vulnerability; if it is used with the print system, it is conceivably exploitable remotely.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-057.0 2002-12-06
Gentoo groff-20021019 2002-10-19
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-11 2002-01-27
Trustix 2002-0020 2002-01-18
Red Hat RHSA-2002:004-06 2002-01-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:012 2002-02-07

Comments (none posted)

Problem loading untrusted images in imlib

Package(s):imlib CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0167 CAN-2002-0168
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:June 6, 2002
Description: Versions of imlib prior to 1.9.13 used the NetPBM package in ways which "make it possible for attackers to create image files such that when loaded via software which uses Imlib, could crash the program or potentially allow arbitrary code to be executed." (First LWN report: March 28).
Alerts:
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-3 2002-05-22
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:015 2002-05-07
Red Hat RHSA-2002:048-14 2002-05-16
Red Hat RHSA-2002:048-06 2002-03-20
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:029 2002-04-25
Eridani ERISA-2002:015 2002-05-18
Eridani ERISA-2002:011 2002-03-27
Conectiva CLA-2002:481 2002-05-08
Conectiva CLA-2002:470 2002-03-28
SCO Group CSSA-2002-019.0 2002-04-29

Comments (none posted)

Cross-site scripting vulnerability in Horde/IMP 2.2.7 and 3.0

Package(s):imp horde/imp CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:June 19, 2002
Description: Version 2.2.8 of IMP has been released, it fixes some vulnerabilities. "The Horde team announces the availability of IMP 2.2.8, which prevents some potential cross-site scripting (CSS) attacks." Upgrading to IMP 3.1 or, at least, 2.2.8 is recommended (First LWN report: April 11, 2002).

Update: IMP 3.0, which was initially believed to be immune, is also vulnerable. The problem is fixed in IMP 3.1.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-126-1 2002-04-16
SCO Group CSSA-2002-016.0 2002-04-16

Comments (1 posted)

Mozilla XMLHttpRequest file disclosure vulnerability

Package(s):mozilla CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0354
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:October 18, 2002
Description: This XMLHttpRequest security bug impacts all Mozilla-based browsers. "The bug is found in versions of Mozilla from 0.9.7 to 0.9.9 on various operating system platforms, and in Netscape versions 6.1 and higher." (First LWN report: May 2).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:192-13 2002-10-09
Red Hat RHSA-2002:079-13 2002-05-13
Conectiva CLA-2002:490 2002-05-29

Comments (none posted)

Remotely exploitable vulnerability in pine

Package(s):pine CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0014
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:November 27, 2002
Description: Pine has an unpleasant vulnerability in URL handling vulnerability which can lead to command execution by remote attackers. (First LWN report:  January 17th).

This vulnerability is remotely exploitable; updating is a good idea.

Note: If an update isn't yet available for your distribution, setting enable-msg-view-urls to "off" in pine's setup will avoid the vulnerability. (Thanks to Greg Herlein).

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:046 2002-11-25
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-8 2002-01-27
Slackware sl-1010936849 2002-01-13
Red Hat RHSA-2002:009-06 2002-01-14
EnGarde ESA-20020114-002 2002-01-14
Conectiva CLA-2002:460 2002-01-31

Comments (none posted)

Sharutils potential privilege escalation using uudecode

Package(s):sharutils CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0178
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:October 31, 2002
Description: According to the CVE entry, "uudecode, as available in the sharutils package before 4.2.1, does not check whether the filename of the uudecoded file is a pipe or symbolic link, which could allow attackers to overwrite files or execute commands." (First LWN report: May 16).
Alerts:
Gentoo 200210-012 2002-10-30
SCO Group CSSA-2002-040.0 2002-10-28
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:052 2002-08-14
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-4 2002-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2002:065-13 2002-05-14
Eridani ERISA-2002:014 2002-05-16

Comments (none posted)

Multiple vulnerabilities in tcpdump

Package(s):tcpdump CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:June 5, 2002
Description: Version 3.5.2 fixed a buffer overflow vulnerability in all prior versions. However, newer versions, including 3.6.2, are vulnerable to another buffer overflow in the AFS RPC functions that was reported by Nick Cleaton. (First LWN report: May 9).

Both problems appear to have been reported and fixed in FreeBSD some months ago. The CIAC report on the vulnerability in versions prior to 3.5.2 is dated October 31, 2000. Nick Cleaton's FreeBSD security advisory on the AFS RPC bug, and reference to a fix for FreeBSD, is dated July, 17, 2001. Tcpdump 3.7 was released on January 21, 2002.

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:020 2002-05-29
Red Hat RHSA-2001:089-08 2002-02-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:032 2002-05-16
Conectiva CLA-2002:480 2002-05-07

Comments (none 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)

Multiple vulnerabilities in SNMP implementations

Package(s):ucdsnmp ucd-snmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0012 CAN-2002-0013
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:September 17, 2002
Description: Most SNMP implementations out there have a variety of buffer overflow vulnerabilities and should be upgraded at first opportunity. See this CERT advisory for more. (First LWN report: February 14).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:036-26 2002-09-12
Yellow Dog YDU-20020211-1 2002-02-11
Red Hat RHSA-2001:163-20 2002-02-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:014 2002-02-15
Debian DSA-111-2 2002-02-28
Debian DSA-111-1 2002-02-14
Conectiva CLA-2002:462 2002-02-14
SCO Group CSSA-2002-004.0 2002-01-22

Comments (none posted)

webalizer: reverse DNS buffer overflow vulnerability

Package(s):webalizer CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:January 27, 2003
Description: The cause is a buffer overflow bug. This one sounds nasty. If reverse DNS lookups are enabled in webalizer, "an attacker with control over the victims DNS may spoof responses thus triggering a buffer overflow, potentially leading to a root compromise." Webalizer 2.01-10 "fixes this and a few other buglets that have been discovered in the last month or so". (First LWN report:  April 18th, 2002).
Alerts:
Yellow Dog YDU-20030127-4 2003-01-27
Red Hat RHSA-2002:254-05 2002-12-04
SCO Group CSSA-2002-036.0 2002-10-22
EnGarde ESA-20020423-009 2002-04-23
Conectiva CLA-2002:476 2002-04-26

Comments (none posted)

Webmin/Usermin vulnerabilities

Package(s):webmin CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:January 10, 2003
Description: Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Webmin has cross-site scripting and session ID spoofing vulnerabilities which are fixed in the May 6, 2002 release of version 0.970. (First LWN report: May 9).

This one is scary. The session ID spoofing vulnerability allows the "possibility that arbitrary commands may be executed with root privileges." Upgrading is strongly recommended. At a minimum avoid the "preconditions for a successful exploit" by disabling password timeouts under Webmin->Configuration->Authentication.

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-002.0 2003-01-09
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-7 2002-05-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:033 2002-05-21

Comments (1 posted)

Problems with libgtop_daemon

Package(s):wuftpd libgtop CVE #(s):
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:May 7, 2003
Description: The libgtop_daemon package is a GNOME program which makes system information available remotely. LWN reported the remotely exploitable format string and buffer overflow vulnerabilities in that package on December 6th. On November 28th disabling the libgtop_daemon on systems where it is running until an update is available.

Many Linux systems do not run libgtop by default, but applying the update is a good idea anyway.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-301-1 2003-05-07
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:094 2001-12-19
Debian DSA-098-1 2002-01-09
Conectiva CLA-2002:448 2002-01-03

Comments (1 posted)

zlib corrupts malloc data structures via double free

Package(s):zlib rsync libz vnc zlib, cvs, gnupg, rrdtool, libz/zlib packages upgrade security problems cvs recompiled against updated + /tmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0059 CAN-2002-0092 CAN-2002-0080
Created:May 21, 2002 Updated:June 6, 2002
Description: This vulnerability impacts all major Linux vendors. It may impact every Linux installation on Earth. Updates are required to zlib and any packages that were statically built with the zlib code. (First LWN report: March 14).

LinuxSecurity describes the vulnerability and coordinated distributor efforts in detail. "Packages including X11, rsync, the Linux kernel, QT, mozilla, gcc, vnc, and many other programs that have the ability to use network compression are potentially vulnerable."

Updating is recommended. As always, please proceed with caution when applying updates to the kernel.

Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2002:493 2002-06-05
Trustix 2002-0040 2002-03-18
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:011 2002-03-11
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:010 2002-03-11
Slackware sl-1015950525 2002-03-12
Slackware sl-1015949806 2002-03-12
Red Hat RHSA-2002:027-22 2002-03-11
Red Hat RHSA-2002:026-39 2002-03-15
Red Hat RHSA-2002:026-35 2002-03-11
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.003 2002-03-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:023-1 2002-03-13
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:023 2002-03-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:022 2002-03-12
Eridani ERISA-2002:009 2002-03-13
Eridani ERISA-2002:008 2002-03-13
Debian DSA-122-1 2002-03-11
SCO Group CSSA-2002-015.0 2002-04-04

Comments (none posted)

Resources

CERT Summary CS-2002-02

The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) issued their CERT quaterly summary "to draw attention to the types of attacks reported to our incident response team, as well as other noteworthy incident and vulnerability information."

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Announcing Fenris 0.06

Fenris 0.06 has been released by Michal Zalewski. "This release brings you much improved debugging capabilities, from a console-based debugging GUI [...], to core functionality fixes, anti-debugger techniques detection, better performance, or an updated write-up on debugging burneye-protected code."

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Linux Security Week and Advisory Watch

The June 3 Linux Security Week from LinuxSecurity.com is available, as are the Linux Advisory Watch Newsletters from May 24 and May 31.

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Book Review: SSH, The Secure Shell - The Definitive Guide

Danny Yee has reviewed SSH, The Secure Shell - The Definitive Guide published by O'Reilly & Associates in 2001.

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Events

Upcoming Security Events

Date Event Location
June 6 - 7, 2002Qualys Security Conference(Hotel Nikko)San Francisco, CA
June 17 - 19, 2002NetSec 2002San Fransisco, California, USA
June 24 - 28, 200214th Annual Computer Security Incident Handling Conference(Hilton Waikoloa Village)Hawaii
June 24 - 26, 200215th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop(Keltic Lodge, Cape Breton)Nova Scotia, Canada
June 28 - 29, 2002Edinburgh Financial Cryptography Engineering 2002Edinburgh, Scotland
July 31 - August 1, 2002Black Hat Briefings 2002(Caesars Palace Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 2 - 4, 2002Defcon(Alexis Park Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, Nevada
August 5 - 9, 200211th USENIX Security SymposiumSan Francisco, CA, USA

For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we don't list above) and events further in the future, check out Security Focus' calendar, one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to lwn@lwn.net.

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