Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 16:28:06 +0200 (MEST)
From: Marc Heuse [email protected]
Subject: [suse-security-announce] SuSE Security Announcement –
aaa_base
SuSE Security Announcement
Package: aaabase < 2000.1.3
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 14:03:28 GMT
Affected SuSE versions: all
Vulnerability Type: remove any local file(s) executing attacker
supplied commands as non-root
SuSE default package: yes
Other affected systems: unknown
A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are
using this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s).
Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected
as well, please contact your vendor for information about this
issue.
Please note that we provide this information on an “as-is” basis
only. There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any
direct, indirect or incidental damage arising from this information
or the installation of the update package.
1. Problem Description
aaa_base is the basic package which comes with any SuSE Linux
installation. Two vulnerabilities have been found:
1) The cron job /etc/cron.daily/aaa_base does a daily checking
of files in /tmp and /var/tmp, where old files will be deleted if
configured to do so. Please note this this feature is NOT activated
by default
2) Some system accounts have their homedirectories set to /tmp
by default. These are the users games, firewall, wwwrun and nobody
on a SuSE 6.4.
2. Impact
1) If the /tmp cleanup is activated, any file or directory can be
deleted by any local user
2) If an attacker creates dot files in /tmp (e.g. bash
profiles), these might be executed if someone uses e.g. “su –
nobody” to switch to the nobody user. This can lead to a compromise
of that userid. This vulnerability is present in several other unix
systems as well – please check all!
3. Solution
1) Update the package from our FTP server.
2) The root user will receive a email with the accounts listed
which have a homedirectory in /tmp. You have to fix this by hand,
because some installations might break if they rely on information
saved in the (unsafe) /tmp homedirectory. The email will give more
information what to do.
Please verify these md5 checksums of the updates before installing:
369c48687807875e9b01f24b6e6bb061 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update/6.3/a1/aaa_base-2000.1.3-0.alpha.rpm 350cabc140a177dfa1909d356c982647 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.2/a1/aaa_base-99.9.8-0.i386.rpm 1b0ccf6db229d6c45692588d826853b7 ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/a1/aaa_base-2000.1.3-0.i386.rpm 34ff11f9ffd877231fab6add4a1723dd ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/a1/aaa_base-2000.4.27-1.i386.rpm
You can find updates on our ftp-Server:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update
for Intel processors
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/axp/update
for Alpha processors
or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors:
http://www.suse.de/ftp.html
http://www.suse.com/ftp_new.html
Our webpage for patches:
http://www.suse.de/patches/index.html
Our webpage for security announcements:
http://www.suse.de/security
If you want to report vulnerabilities, please contact [email protected]
SuSE has got two free security mailing list services to which any
interested party may subscribe:
[email protected] - moderated and for general/linux/SuSE security discussions. All SuSE security announcements are sent to this list.
[email protected] - SuSE's announce-only mailing list. Only SuSE's security annoucements are sent to this list.
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