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utempter problems with symlink and strncpy

Package(s):utempter CVE #(s):CAN-2004-0233
Created:April 19, 2004 Updated:June 11, 2004
Description: Steve Grubb discovered two potential issues in the utempter program:
  1. If the path to the device contained /../ or /./ or //, the program was not exiting as it should. It would be possible to use something like /dev/../tmp/tty0, and then if /tmp/tty0 were deleted and symlinked to another important file, programs that have root privileges that do no further validation can then overwrite whatever the symlink pointed to.

  2. Several calls to strncpy without a manual termination of the string. This would most likely crash utempter.
Alerts:
Whitebox WBSA-2004:174-01 2004-06-10
Red Hat RHSA-2004:174-01 2004-05-26
Fedora-Legacy FLSA:1546 2004-05-18
Gentoo 200405-05 2004-05-13
Red Hat RHSA-2004:175-01 2004-04-30
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:031-1 2004-04-21
Fedora FEDORA-2004-108 2004-04-21
Slackware SSA:2004-110-01 2004-04-19
Mandrake MDKSA-2004:031 2004-04-19

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