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GNU cfengine is an abstract programming language for system administrators of large heterogeneous networks, used for maintenance and administration. Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi> has found several format string vulnerabilities in syslog() calls that can be abused to either make the cfengine program to segfault and die or to execute arbitrary commands as the user the cfengine process runs as (usually root).

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.

A locally-exploitable security hole was found where a normal user could trick root running GnoRPM into writing to arbitrary files due to a bug in the gnorpm tmp file handling.

In versions of boa before 0.94.8.3, it is possible to access files outside of the server's document root by the use of properly constructed URL requests.

Linux-Mandrake has recently released a Security Advisory (MDKSA-2000:051) covering a race condition in the esound. Debian is not affected by this bug; the bug is specific to the unix domain socket support, which was turned off in stable (2.2/potato) and unstable (woody) on February 16, 2000. Therefore neither the current stable or unstable distribution of Debian is vulnerable to this problem. Debian 2.1 (aka "slink") is also not vulnerable to this problem; the version of esound in Debian 2.1 is 0.2.6, which predates the buggy unix domain socket code.

Updated usermode packages are now available for Red Hat Linux 6.x and 7.

tmpwatch as shipped in Red Hat Linux 6.1, 6.2, and 7.0 uses fork() to recursively process subdirectories, enabling a local user to perform a denial of service attack. Tmpwatch from Red Hat Linux 6.2 and 7.0 also contains an option to allow it to use the fuser command to check for open files before removal. It executed fuser in an insecure fashion, allowing a local root exploit.

a root exploit and several additional bugs in traceroute have been corrected.

Esound, the Gnome sound server, contains a race condition that a malicious user could exploit to change permissions of any file owned by the esound user.

lpr has a format string security bug. It also mishandles any extension to the lpd communication protocol, and assumes that the instructions contained in the extension are a file it should try to print. It also has a race condition in the handling of queue interactions that can cause the queue to wedge. Note: Packages indicated in revision -03 and earlier were not signed with the Red Hat GPG key. This has been corrected.

lpr has a format string security bug. It also mishandles any extension to the lpd communication protocol, and assumes that the instructions contained in the extension are a file it should try to print. It also has a race condition in the handling of queue interactions that can cause the queue to wedge.

LPRng has a string format bug in the use_syslog function which could lead to root compromise.

A vulnerability involving an input validation error in the "site exec" command has recently been identified in the wu-ftpd program (CERT Advisory CA-2000-13).

Many customers have asked to publish the packages of the SuSE-7.0 distribution that are not included in the US version due to US crypto regulations.

We value your input during this transitional phase. Please direct your comments to feedback@security.debian.org

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

The syslogd package consists of two daemons that are being launched upon system startup: klogd and syslogd. The former collects kernel messages and passes them on to the syslog(3) facility. syslogd will pick up the logging messages and write them to the logfiles as specified by the syslogd configuration file /etc/syslog.conf. Errors in both the klogd and the syslogd can cause both daemons do die when specially designed strings get passed to the kernel by the user, eg. with a malformed structure in a system call. These errors have been discovered by Jouko Pynnönen, Solar Designer, a fix for one of the bugs has been provided by Daniel Jacobowitz.

Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in syslogd and klogd. A local root exploit is possible, and remote exploits may be possible in some cases (though we are not currently aware of a remote exploit.)

A string format / buffer overflow bug has been discovered in klogd, the kernel logging daemon. Please upgrade to the new sysklogd 1.4 package available on the Slackware FTP site.

Various vulnerabilities exist in syslogd/klogd. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, it could be possible for local users to gain root access. No remote exploit exists at this time, but it remains theoretically possible that this vulnerability could be exploited remotely under certain rare circumstances. All users should upgrade to the new sysklogd packages. Users of Red Hat Linux 6.0 and 6.1 should use the packages for Red Hat Linux 6.