Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 17:18:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Katie Moussouris k8e@mail.turbolinux.com
To: tl-security-announce@turbolinux.com
Subject: [TL-Security-Announce] mtr-0.41 and earlier
TLSA2000003-1
TurboLinux Security Announcement
Package: mtr-0.41 and earlier
Date: Wed Mar 8 14:54:54 PST 2000
Affected TurboLinux versions: TurboLinux 6.0.2 and earlier
Vulnerability Type: Local root compromise
TurboLinux Advisory ID#: TLSA2000003-1
Credits: This vulnerability was posted to the Bugtraq mailing list
on March 3, 2000 by Viktor Fougstedt .
A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update the package in your installation as soon as possible
or disable the service.
1. Problem Summary
Older versions of mtr did not properly drop root privileges.
From Viktor’s original posting: “Mtr only does a seteuid(), and not
a full setuid() when attempting to drop root privs. Seteuid()
_only_ affects the effective uid of the process, and the saved uid
is therefore still 0 after this call. When a process has saved uid
0, it may issue a setuid(0) to regain full root privileges (i.e.
real and effective uid 0).”
2. Impact
A malicious user could take control over mtr (perhaps through
gtk or curses) and can then execute arbitrary code as root.
3. Solution
Update the package from our ftp server by running the following
command:
rpm -Uv ftp_path_to_filename
Where ftp_path_to_filename is the following:
ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com/pub/updates/6.0/security/mtr-0.42-1.i386.rpm
The source rpm can be downloaded here:
ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com/pub/updates/6.0/SRPMS/mtr-0.42-1.src.rpm
**Note: You must rebuild and install the rpm if you choose to
download and install the srpm. Simply installing the srpm alone
WILL NOT CLOSE THE SECURITY HOLE.
Please verify the md5 checksum of the update before you
install:
MD5 sum Package Name
966e78977e5847d817efed904009f467 mtr-0.42-1.i386.rpm 3efef9f2d24f4169f02574063f5cbb1f mtr-0.42-1.src.rpm
You can find more updates on our ftp server:
ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com/pub/updates/6.0/security/
for TL6.0 Workstation and Server security updates
ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com/pub/updates/4.0/security/
for TL4.0 Workstation and Server security updates
Our webpage for security announcements:
http://www.turbolinux.com/security
If you want to report vulnerabilities, please contact: security-rt@turbolinux.com