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As a result of a package rebuild, the package for the SuSE-7.1 Intel i386
distribution is not available under the URL as listed below. The listed
package was named "cron-3.0.1-297.i386.rpm". This package also fixed the
mentioned problems with the package.
We are resending this announcement with the correct pathnames and md5sums.
Thank you for your understanding,
Roman Drahtmüller.
______________________________________________________________________________
SuSE Security Announcement
Package: cron-3.0.1-296
Announcement-ID: SuSE-SA:2001:17 (resent)
Date: Tuesday, May 15th, 2001 15:30:00 CEST
Affected SuSE versions: 7.1
Vulnerability Type: local privilege escalation
Severity (1-10): 7
SuSE default package: yes
Other affected systems: All UN*X systems using this package
Content of this advisory:
1) security vulnerability resolved: crontab
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
The crontab program is running setuser-id root and invokes the editor
specified in the EDITOR environment variable, usually vi.
If crontab discovers that the format of the edited file is incorrect, it
executes the editor again but fails to drop its root privileges before.
Therefore it is possible to execute arbitrary commands as root.
It has been fixed by properly dropping the privileges before executing
the editor. This bug was found by Sebastian Krahmer.
A possible temporary workaround is to remove the suid bit of the
/usr/bin/crontab program: chmod -s /usr/bin/crontab.
If you change the mode, you should also do so in the files
/etc/permissions*.
A permanent solution for the problem is to update the cron package
from our ftp server.
Download the update package from locations desribed below and install
the package with the command `rpm -Uhv 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 file.rpm',
independently from the md5 signatures below.
i386 Intel Platform:
SuSE-7.1
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/a1/cron-3.0.1-335.i386.rpm
606d2c5d67a851ce4e1907146a184cd4
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/zq1/cron-3.0.1-335.src.rpm
57805850a0f4fcf8afa99326d3071fd0
Sparc Platform:
SuSE-7.1
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc/update/7.1/a1/cron-3.0.1-316.sparc.rpm
4db292d0276badc0ae58fd6aeaab64c0
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc/update/7.1/zq1/cron-3.0.1-316.src.rpm
16facdbbce03d43fa05d540b810d8636
AXP Alpha Platform:
The SuSE-7.1 AXP-Alpha Edition does not suffer from this problem.
PPC Power PC Platform:
SuSE-7.1
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/7.1/a1/cron-3.0.1-295.ppc.rpm
589e8575bbbee29a07319f5c5ada9bcc
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/update/7.1/zq1/cron-3.0.1-295.src.rpm
ff747e2aee85a53e3a30827b33383a7d
______________________________________________________________________________
2) Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:
- The man program running setuser-id 'man' suffers from format string and
bufferoverflow bugs. Updates are available on the ftp server at the
usual location, the announcement will follow shortly.
______________________________________________________________________________
3) standard appendix:
SuSE runs two security mailing lists to which any interested party may
subscribe:
suse-security@suse.com
- general/linux/SuSE security discussion.
All SuSE security announcements are sent to this list.
To subscribe, send an email to