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SuSE Security Announcement
Package: aaabase < 2000.1.3
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 14:03:28 GMT
Affected SuSE versions: all
Vulnerability Type: remove any local file(s)
executing attacker supplied commands as non-root
SuSE default package: yes
Other affected systems: unknown
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A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using
this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s).
Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as
well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue.
Please note that we provide this information on an "as-is" basis only.
There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or
incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of
the update package.
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1. Problem Description
aaa_base is the basic package which comes with any SuSE Linux installation.
Two vulnerabilities have been found:
1) The cron job /etc/cron.daily/aaa_base does a daily checking of files in
/tmp and /var/tmp, where old files will be deleted if configured to do so.
Please note this this feature is NOT activated by default
2) Some system accounts have their homedirectories set to /tmp by default.
These are the users games, firewall, wwwrun and nobody on a SuSE 6.4.
2. Impact
1) If the /tmp cleanup is activated, any file or directory can be deleted
by any local user
2) If an attacker creates dot files in /tmp (e.g. bash profiles), these
might be executed if someone uses e.g. "su - nobody" to switch to the
nobody user. This can lead to a compromise of that userid.
This vulnerability is present in several other unix systems as well -
please check all!
3. Solution
1) Update the package from our FTP server.
2) The root user will receive a email with the accounts listed which have
a homedirectory in /tmp. You have to fix this by hand, because some
installations might break if they rely on information saved in the (unsafe)
/tmp homedirectory.
The email will give more information what to do.
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Please verify these md5 checksums of the updates before installing:
369c48687807875e9b01f24b6e6bb061 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.3/a1/aaa_base-2000.1.3-0.alpha.rpm
350cabc140a177dfa1909d356c982647 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.2/a1/aaa_base-99.9.8-0.i386.rpm
1b0ccf6db229d6c45692588d826853b7 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/a1/aaa_base-2000.1.3-0.i386.rpm
34ff11f9ffd877231fab6add4a1723dd ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/a1/aaa_base-2000.4.27-1.i386.rpm
______________________________________________________________________________
You can find updates on our ftp-Server:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update for Intel processors
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update for Alpha processors
or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors:
http://www.suse.de/ftp.html
http://www.suse.com/ftp_new.html
Our webpage for patches:
http://www.suse.de/patches/index.html
Our webpage for security announcements:
http://www.suse.de/security
If you want to report vulnerabilities, please contact
security@suse.de
______________________________________________________________________________
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