Red Hat Security Advisory: new initscripts packages available

Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 11:06:00 -0500
From: “Michael K. Johnson” <johnsonm@redhat.com>
To: redhat-watch-list@redhat.com

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Red Hat, Inc. Security Advisory

Synopsis: new initscripts packages available (/tmp race)
Advisory ID: RHSA-1999:052-02
Issue date: 1999-11-08
Updated on: 1999-11-23
Keywords: lang.csh resolv.conf CHAP ppp-watch
Cross references:

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Revision History:
1999-11-22: Update to fix several functionality bugs. No new
security bugs were found. (initscripts-4.67) Note: only the new
bugs apply to the Sparc release, so this is a security update for
the Intel platform only.

1. Topic:

One security bug and several functionality bugs have been fixed
in a new release of initscripts.

2. Problem description:

A /tmp race existed in /etc/profile.d/lang.csh. Users who had
csh/tcsh as their login shell could be vulnerable to having
arbitrary shell code run by their shell on login.

On PPP connections, CHAP authentication did not always work. New
DNS entries were not always correctly added to the /etc/resolv.conf
file. Also, there was a theoretical chance that random processes
could be sent signals by ppp-watch, though no outside process could
affect which processes would be signaled, and in every known case
the signals are sent to impossible process ids and therefore have
no effect.

Other various bugs present in the initscripts that shipped with
Red Hat Linux 6.1 are fixed, including:

– linuxconf-created IP aliases did not work
– linuxconf-created static routes may not work
– path to ipx_interface was incorrect
– /sbin/service did not work
– incompatibility with devfs
– inability to shut down cleanly with quotas
– any user could force ‘interactive’ startup on next reboot

1999-11-22: More bugs fixed, including
– pppd default route problem
– more possible CHAP authentication bugs (with older PPP
configurations)
– netcfg and linuxconf could fail to bring up PPP connections
– in failure cases, pppd error messages could fill logs
– some device alias configurations were not properly
initialized

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

Security problem in lang.csh: 6645
Missing DNS entries: 6664, 6649
CHAP: 6664, 6646, 6506, 6586, 6324
Linuxconf issues: 5784, 5976, 6039, 6069, 6162, 6777,
PPP default route: 7142, 7000
PPP log filling: 7046, 7000
Device aliases: 6863, 6777, 6162, 6069
Others: 5646, 5959, 6252, 6286, 6300, 6301, 6527, 7159, 7158, 7156,
7018, 6949, 6857, 6828, 6588, 6527

4. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Linux 6.1, Intel
Red Hat Linux 6.1, Sparc

5. Obsoleted by:

6. Conflicts with:

7. RPMs required:

Intel:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.1/i386/initscripts-4.67-1.i386.rpm

Sparc:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.1/sparc/initscripts-4.67-1.sparc.rpm

Source packages:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.1/SRPMS/initscripts-4.67-1.src.rpm

8. Solution:

For each RPM for your particular architecture, run:
rpm -Uvh
where filename is the name of the RPM.

9. Verification:

MD5 sum                           Package Name 

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af8eaa0cc62b3cc49ab07bc8e4f2a1a2 SRPMS/initscripts-4.67-1.src.rpm
48a2bb74fdad6736c20067f6203cf47c i386/initscripts-4.67-1.i386.rpm
a6f33b7db43ef9e431a2ab3ae0771cea sparc/initscripts-4.67-1.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

10. References: