Debian alert: New mime-support packages fix temporary file race conditions

Posted by dave on Apr 22, 2003 6:24 AM EDT
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Colin Phipps discovered several problems in mime-support, that contains support programs for the MIME control files 'mime.types' and 'mailcap'. When a temporary file is to be used it is created insecurely, allowing an attacker to overwrite arbitrary under the user id of the person executing run-mailcap, most probably root. Additionally the program did not properly escape shell escape characters when executing a command. This is unlikely to be exploitable, though.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Security Advisory DSA 292-1                     security@debian.org
http://www.debian.org/security/                             Martin Schulze
April 22nd, 2003                        http://www.debian.org/security/faq
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Package        : mime-support
Vulnerability  : insecure temporary file creation
Problem-Type   : local
Debian-specific: no

Colin Phipps discovered several problems in mime-support, that contains
support programs for the MIME control files 'mime.types' and 'mailcap'.
When a temporary file is to be used it is created insecurely, allowing
an attacker to overwrite arbitrary under the user id of the person
executing run-mailcap, most probably root.  Additionally the program did
not properly escape shell escape characters when executing a command.
This is unlikely to be exploitable, though.

For the stable distribution (woody) these problems have been fixed in
version 3.18-1.1.

For the old stable distribution (potato) these problems have been
fixed in version 3.9-1.1.

For the unstable distribution (sid) these problems have been
fixed in version 3.22-1.

We recommend that you upgrade your mime-support packages.


Upgrade Instructions
- --------------------

wget url
        will fetch the file for you
dpkg -i file.deb
        will install the referenced file.

If you are using the apt-get package manager, use the line for
sources.list as given below:

apt-get update
        will update the internal database
apt-get upgrade
        will install corrected packages

You may use an automated update by adding the resources from the
footer to the proper configuration.


Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 alias potato
- ---------------------------------

  Source archives:

    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.9-1.1.dsc
      Size/MD5 checksum:      473 45ec24d391fbccffe70612eee5117d12
    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.9-1.1.tar.gz
      Size/MD5 checksum:    91665 530e77c39a2ef192da2492af7b4ee493

  Architecture independent components:

    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.9-1.1_all.deb
      Size/MD5 checksum:    99118 0b86cad241365d36b376fdc2d5d6bb2e


Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 alias woody
- --------------------------------

  Source archives:

    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.18-1.1.dsc
      Size/MD5 checksum:      475 a4e5dfead5075aff505dea895dc15a44
    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.18-1.1.tar.gz
      Size/MD5 checksum:    72157 2c486737714c778928f354ccab4a01be

  Architecture independent components:

    http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/m/mime-support/mime-support_3.18-1.1_all.deb
      Size/MD5 checksum:    68520 4a2fb1fa53ef6c0b83e5416399a1b2ea


  These files will probably be moved into the stable distribution on
  its next revision.

- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For apt-get: deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main
For dpkg-ftp: ftp://security.debian.org/debian-security dists/stable/updates/main
Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org
Package info: `apt-cache show <pkg>' and http://packages.debian.org/<pkg>

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