Subject: [yellowdog-updates] Yellow Dog Linux Security Advisory: YDU-20000810-2
dburcaw@terraplex.com
Date: Thu Aug 10 2000 - 01:02:12 MDT
Yellow Dog Linux Security Announcement
--------------------------------------
Package: mailx
Issue Date: August 10, 2000
Update Date: August 10, 2000
Priority: high
Advisory ID: YDU-20000810-2
1. Topic:
/bin/mail can be utilized in conjunction with
suidperl to gain root access.
2. Problem:
Under certain conditions, suidperl will attempt to send mail
to the local superuser account using /bin/mail. An exploit script
may use suidperl and mailx's tendency to inherit settings from the
environment, to gain local root access.
This update restricts the list of variables /bin/mail will read from the
environment.
3. Solution:
a) Updating via yup...
We suggest that you use the Yellow Dog Update Program (yup)
to keep your system up-to-date. The following command will
automatically retrieve and install the fixed version of
the mailx onto your system:
yup update mailx
b) Updating manually...
The update can also be retrieved manually from our ftp site
below along with the rpm command that should be used to install
the update.
ftp://ftp.yellowdoglinux.com/pub/yellowdog/updates/champion-1.2/ppc/RPMS/
mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm
rpm -Fvh mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm
4. Verification
MD5 checksum Package
-------------------------------- ----------------------------
6f3af116f66a05b7784e72bd0658159c RPMS/mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm
ca0581b6e0a13a2c0ed78f16609eaf20 SRPMS/mailx-8.1.1-16.src.rpm
If you wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or tampered with,
examine the md5sum with the following command: rpm --checksig --nogpg filename
5. Misc.
Terra Soft has setup a moderated mailing list where these security, bugfix, and package
enhancement announcements will be posted. See http://lists.yellowdoglinux.com/ for more
information.
For information regarding the usage of yup, the Yellow Dog Update Program, see
http://devel.yellowdoglinux.com/rp_yup.shtml
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Thu Aug 10 2000 - 01:03:12 MDT