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______________________________________________________________________________
SuSE Security Announcement
Package: esound
Date: Wednesday, October 11th, 2000 19:00 MEST
Affected SuSE versions: 6.3, 6.4, 7.0
Vulnerability Type: local user compromise
Severity (1-10): 3
SuSE default package: yes
Other affected systems: Linux systems using esound with unix domain
socket support
Content of this advisory:
1) security vulnerability resolved: esound
problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds
3) standard appendix (further information)
______________________________________________________________________________
1) problem description, brief discussion, solution, upgrade information
esound, a daemon program for the Gnome desktop, is used for sound replay
by various programs such as windowmanagers and other applications.
The esound daemon creates a directory /tmp/.esd to host a unix domain
socket. Upon startup, the daemon changes the modes of the socket, but
a race condition allows an attacker to place a symlink into the
directory to point to an arbitrary file belonging to the victim. By
consequence, an attacker may be able to change the permissions of any
file belonging to the victim. If the victim's userid is root, the
attacker may be able to change the modes of any file in the system.
SuSE distributions before SuSE-6.3 were not vulnerable to this attack
because unix domain sockets were not supported by the esound daemon as
shipped with these distributions.
The only efficient solution for the problem is to store the unix domain
socket in a directory where only the user has write access to. The
user's home directory is such a location.
Update packages that fix the race conditions by placing the sockets into
the user's home directory are available for download. It is recommended
to apply the fix on systems where multiple users can access the local
filesystem.
Note: Not all filesystems support unix domain sockets. The fix might
not work if the user's home directory is on such a filesystem
(such as AFS, eg.). In such rare cases, administrators are usually
aware of such limitations. SuSE default installations do not have
this limitation.
Download the update package from locations desribed below and install
the package with the command `rpm -Fhv file.rpm'. The md5sum for each
file is in the line below. You can verify the integrity of the rpm
files using the command
`rpm --checksig --nogpg file.rpm',
independently from the md5 signatures below.
i386 Intel Platform:
SuSE-7.0
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/snd1/esound-0.2.19-15.i386.rpm
9d8addaa5ba29554a727eb34ae5189f4
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/zq1/esound-0.2.19-15.src.rpm
a9724b99a96430b1b7c1f741a8e8d528
SuSE-6.4
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/snd1/esound-0.2.16-75.i386.rpm
6f32f0867d1597a5129d0516438d9cca
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/zq1/esound-0.2.16-75.src.rpm
94ca6842981f7a501300d9edfc5cbf73
SuSE-6.3
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/snd1/esound-0.2.15-21.i386.rpm
16a5804a2f27e62d73df40d206b047ca
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/zq1/esound-0.2.15-21.src.rpm
c86689fd5d9f719135e1263dd5a38832
Sparc Platform:
SuSE-7.0
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc/update/7.0/snd1/esound-0.2.19-15.sparc.rpm
112648ef64c351952f832b180fcca23c
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc/update/7.0/zq1/esound-0.2.19-15.src.rpm
a0bb3e3517ca83c13abd6827a8d2295e
AXP Alpha Platform:
SuSE-6.4
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.4/snd1/esound-0.2.16-75.alpha.rpm
d2efefb21a6424a81e63788d972db49d
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.4/zq1/esound-0.2.16-75.src.rpm
a69ebae320c6f118f4b9e07f2a9af4d2
SuSE-6.3
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.3/snd1/esound-0.2.15-21.alpha.rpm
19942e308eda0c0d505bb64da734ad8d
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.3/zq1/esound-0.2.15-21.src.rpm
6f337d6864111d27fa93ef2bc3cb7b5a
PPC Power PC Platform:
SuSE-7.0
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/7.0/snd1/esound-0.2.19-16.ppc.rpm
be6daabfee0e7e629b848814be81d9d0
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/7.0/zq1/esound-0.2.19-16.src.rpm
c77475b2c8fff104f8662bb9179efb64
SuSE-6.4
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/6.4/snd1/esound-0.2.16-75.ppc.rpm
f0e1aa54c3fdf7c6c02b34bedc51ee0f
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/6.4/zq1/esound-0.2.16-75.src.rpm
9acd25b5521201386bb73bc707382646
______________________________________________________________________________
2) Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:
- gnorpm
A race condition has been found in the gnorpm program, a GUI for
the rpm system. The issue will be addressed in a following
announcement.
- ncurses
The ncurses library contains buffer overflows that are exploitable
when user-supplied terminfo databases are processed. This imposes a
security risk on programs/binaries that are linked against libncurses
and run with special privileges. Both workaround and clean solution
is to remove the suid bit from all executable files with setuid bit
set.
The issue will be addressed in a following security announcement.
- apache mod_rewrite
A bug has been discovered in the apache package that allows attackers
to read arbitrary files on a system that runs apache. The responsible
apache module named "mod_rewrite" is not used by default on SuSE
installations of the apache package. The issue will be addressed in
a following security announcement.
- cfengine
A format string parsing bug causes the cfengine package to be
vulnerable to a remote root attack. Update packages are available,
the security announcement is pending.
- usermode/userhelper
userhelper is a suid helper program designed to let the user who
is logged on to the console execute some programs with root
privileges. SuSE distributions do not contain the usermode package
and therefore are not vulnerable to the security problems recently
discovered in the usermode package.
- tmpwatch
The tmpwatch packages as shipped with SuSE distributions are not
vulnerable to the attacks as discussed on security forums because
we ship an older version that does not provide the functionality
that can be exploited.
- lprNG
The versions of the lprNG package that come with SuSE distributions
are not vulnerable to the format string parsing errors as discussed
in security forums.
- traceroute
The traceroute program has been found vulnerable to a bug
(`traceroute -g 1 -g 1') in many distributions. Newer SuSE
distributions have a different implementation of the traceroute
program and are not vulnerable to the bug found by
Pekka Savola