KDE Advisory: Multiple Vulnerabilities

KDE Security Advisory: Multiple vulnerabilities in KDE
Original Release Date: 2002-12-20
URL: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20021220-1.txt

0. References

        None.


1. Systems affected:

        All KDE 2 releases and all KDE 3 releases (up to and including 
        KDE 3.0.5).


2. Overview:

        In some instances KDE fails to properly quote parameters of
        instructions passed to a command shell for execution. 

        These parameters may incorporate data such as URLs, filenames and
        e-mail addresses, and this data may be provided remotely to a victim
        in an e-mail, a webpage or files on a network filesystem or other
        untrusted source. 

        By carefully crafting such data an attacker might be able to
        execute arbitary commands on a vulnerable sytem using the victim's 
        account and privileges.  

        The KDE Project is not aware of any existing exploits of these 
        vulnerabilities, but is releasing this advisory with patches to
        correct the issues. The patches also provide better safe guards and
        check data from untrusted sources more strictly in multiple places. 

        
3. Impact:

        The vulnerabilities potentially enable local or remote attackers
        to compromise the privacy of a vicitim's data and to execute arbitrary
        shell commands with the victim's privileges, such as erasing files or 
        accessing or modifying data. 


4. Solution:

        The code audit resulted in several fixes which have been applied
        to the KDE 2.2.x and each KDE 3.x branch. 

        All identified problems have been corrected in KDE 3.0.5a. 
        For affected KDE 3.0 systems, we strongly recommend upgrading 
        to this latest stable release. 

        KDE 3.0.5a can be downloaded from

        http://download.kde.org/stable/3.0.5a/

        Please visit the 3.0.5a Info Page (http://www.kde.org/info/3.0.5a.html)
        and your vendor's website for exact package locations and information 
        about available binary packages or updates. 

        For affected KDE 2 systems, a patch for the 2.2.2 source code has
        been made available which fixes these vulnerabilities. Contact your
        OS vendor / binary package provider for information about how to
        obtain updated binary packages.


5. Patches:

        Patches are available for KDE 2.2.2 from the KDE FTP server
        (ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/security_patches/):


        MD5SUM                            PATCH

        522331e2b47f84956eb2df1fcf89ba17  post-2.2.2-kdebase.diff/
        0dbd747882b942465646efe0ba6af802  post-2.2.2-kdegames.diff/
        4b9c93acd452d1de2f4f0bca5b05593f  post-2.2.2-kdegraphics.diff/
        93a12594d0fb48c7b50bfd4a10a9935d  post-2.2.2-kdelibs.diff/
        d1d25b39ee98e340ac3730f7afe54f0c  post-2.2.2-kdemultimedia.diff/
        59ac7be4995bed8b119a4e5882e54cff  post-2.2.2-kdenetwork.diff/
        0a3ae9eeeceefb2f631a26ec787663a9  post-2.2.2-kdepim.diff/
        690c7fdab1bbc743eafac9b06997a03b  post-2.2.2-kdesdk.diff/
        8174e328f47e18a8a52b13b34f5c54e5  post-2.2.2-kdeutils.diff/


        
6. Timeline and credits:

        11/26/2002      FozZy of the "Hackademy Audit Project" 
                        notified the KDE Security Team 
                        <security@kde.org> about vulnerable code parts.
        11/27/2002      Patches for the initially reported vulnerabilites
                        were applied to KDE CVS. 
        11/27/2002      An audit of KDE CVS was started to find more instances
                        of the problematic code sequences. 
        12/06/2002      KDE 3.1 release was delayed because the audit was not
                        yet finished. 
        12/17/2002      Patches for KDE 2.2.2 were created.
        12/20/2002      KDE 3.0.5a tarballs were generated and released. 
        12/21/2002      Public Security Advisory by the KDE Security team.