Red Hat alert: glint symlink vulnerability

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                   Red Hat, Inc. Security Advisory

Synopsis:          glint symlink vulnerability
Advisory ID:       RHSA-2000:062-03
Issue date:        2000-09-19
Updated on:        2000-09-19
Product:           Red Hat Linux
Keywords:          glint symlink rpm
Cross references:  N/A
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1. Topic:

glint blindly follows a symlink in /tmp, overwriting the target file, so it
can conceivably be used to destroy any file on the system.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Linux 5.2 - i386, alpha, sparc

3. Problem description:

If a specific symlink exists in /tmp, glint will open it and write to
it when run by root -- so destruction of any file is possible.

Note that glint does not work with RPM 3.0 or higher.  If you have RPM 3.0
or higher installed, just uninstall the glint package to remove this
vulnerability.

4. Solution:

For each RPM for your particular architecture, run:

rpm -Fvh [filename]

where filename is the name of the RPM.

5. Bug IDs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla for more info):

17544 - HUGE race condition in Glint


6. RPMs required:

Red Hat Linux 5.2:

sparc:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/5.2/sparc/glint-2.6.3-1.sparc.rpm

alpha:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/5.2/alpha/glint-2.6.3-1.alpha.rpm

i386:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/5.2/i386/glint-2.6.3-1.i386.rpm

sources:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/5.2/SRPMS/glint-2.6.3-1.src.rpm

7. Verification:

MD5 sum                           Package Name
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b31d4a967bba65a2acc17c16ca75582c  5.2/SRPMS/glint-2.6.3-1.src.rpm
c9e1679ed0f8c1d15878eb8943be4b75  5.2/alpha/glint-2.6.3-1.alpha.rpm
a74b4697402e5ce8f34959ebe2d5327d  5.2/i386/glint-2.6.3-1.i386.rpm
20d74bc2360f6622dc2062654dde84f9  5.2/sparc/glint-2.6.3-1.sparc.rpm

These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat, Inc. for security.  Our key
is available at:
    http://www.redhat.com/corp/contact.html

You can verify each package with the following command:
    rpm --checksig  

If you only wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or
tampered with, examine only the md5sum with the following command:
    rpm --checksig --nogpg 

8. References:

Thanks to Stan Bubrouski  for finding and
reporting this bug.


Copyright(c) 2000 Red Hat, Inc.