Date: Sat, 20 May 00 02:11:00 +0400
From: bugzilla@redhat.com
To: “redhat-watch-list@redhat.com”
Subject: [RHSA-2000:028-02] Netscape 4.73 available
Red Hat, Inc. Security Advisory
Synopsis: Netscape 4.73 available
Advisory ID: RHSA-2000:028-02
Issue date: 2000-05-19
Updated on: 2000-05-19
Product: Red Hat Linux
Keywords: netscape SSL telnet rlogin
Cross references:
http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?section=discussion&vid=1188
1. Topic:
Netscape 4.73 packages are available. These new packages fix
bugs in SSL certificate validation; these bugs could allow for the
compromising of encrypted SSL sessions.
It is recommended that all users of Netscape update to the new
packages.
2. Relevant releases/architectures:
Red Hat Linux 5.2 – i386
Red Hat Linux 6.2 – i386 alpha
3. Problem description:
The description of the vulnerability, taken from
http://www.securityfocus.com/:
— An attacker poisons a nameserver to redirect all connections to
www.goodguy.com, normally 100.100.100.100, to 99.99.99.99,
www.badguy.com.
The attacker causes all normal http requests to return what they
normally would on www.goodguy.com, even though a user attempting to
contact www.goodguy.com hits www.badguy.com.
Upon getting a hit to www.badguy.com, the attacker causes an SSL
connection to be established. This can be done by embedding a small
image. The user may or may not get a warning about establishing a
secure connection — this warning is on by default, although many
users will choose to disable this warning. The attacker needs to
use a legitimate SSL key, certified by someone listed as
trustworthy (thwate.com, for instance)
The user can continue to shop to their hearts content, on the
real site, as it’s being proxied.
When the user decides to check out, it will attempt to establish
an SSL connection to www.goodguy.com. Upon checking the ip address
for www.goodguy.com, for establishing an SSL connection, it will
note that an SSL connection already exists to it’s IP. The key,
however, was issued to www.badguy.com. The SSL connection will be
established, and by all indications appear to go to
www.goodguy.com, when in fact it is to www.badguy.com.
This could be used by a would be attacker to steal information
such as credit cards, or any other information protected by
SSL.
– —
Another minor vulnerability exists in current versions of
Netscape; by default, netscape will respond to rlogin: and telnet:
URLs by launching a helper application of the appropriate type. It
is possible that when following URLs of these types that certain
information about the local user (user name, environment settings)
can be exposed to a remote host. To change the default associations
to avoid this, users can go to Edit->Preferences, and choose
Communicator->Applications. Then, change the default commands
associated with ‘telnet’ and ‘rlogin’ to something that does not
open up a connection to the remote host, for example, simply
‘xterm’.
4. Solution:
For each RPM for your particular architecture, run:
rpm -Fvh [filename]
where filename is the name of the RPM.
For Red Hat Linux 5.0 and 5.1, use the Red Hat Linux 5.2
packages. For Red Hat Linux 6.0 and 6.1, use the Red Hat Linux 6.2
packages.
5. Bug IDs fixed
(http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla
for more info):
11379 – Netscape 4.73 release for security problems in 4.72
6. RPMs required:
Red Hat Linux 5.2:
intel:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/5.2/i386/netscape-common-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/5.2/i386/netscape-navigator-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/5.2/i386/netscape-communicator-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
sources:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/5.2/SRPMS/netscape-4.73-0.5.2.src.rpm
Red Hat Linux 6.2:
intel:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/i386/netscape-common-4.73-1.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/i386/netscape-navigator-4.73-1.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/i386/netscape-communicator-4.73-1.i386.rpm
alpha:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/alpha/netscape-common-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/alpha/netscape-navigator-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/alpha/netscape-communicator-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
sources:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/SRPMS/netscape-4.73-1.src.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/6.2/SRPMS/netscape-alpha-4.73-1.src.rpm
7. Verification:
MD5 sum Package Name
3e881194baf12d2d7e761a63041ba404 5.2/SRPMS/netscape-4.73-0.5.2.src.rpm
52498e09827f5e854f99e320e2923fc4 5.2/i386/netscape-common-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
1e15dfb4454c36e7352cd1803974f871 5.2/i386/netscape-communicator-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
703a4a0b80ca0c45967cb8cc569b0600 5.2/i386/netscape-navigator-4.73-0.5.2.i386.rpm
a83932536aef2837be8733621c3415d0 6.2/SRPMS/netscape-4.73-1.src.rpm
bb79a4d70ebc7ab6cd91c04fbb951ca8 6.2/SRPMS/netscape-alpha-4.73-1.src.rpm
e800a7af7c20be924469aedb75ad807f 6.2/alpha/netscape-common-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
9502f4ec6d2c99f8f61329898f31450f 6.2/alpha/netscape-communicator-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
d812be498d83e19dba903282c8805ee2 6.2/alpha/netscape-navigator-4.73-1.alpha.rpm
de054f11902c5777446baff909da817c 6.2/i386/netscape-common-4.73-1.i386.rpm
d3825c0c61838da0b35570fb0dc7e743 6.2/i386/netscape-communicator-4.73-1.i386.rpm
aea9965093a8202196f637e8385035d9 6.2/i386/netscape-navigator-4.73-1.i386.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:
N/A