This week has been full of advisories from various Linux distributions regarding two severe problems with glibc. Confusing the issue, more than one vulnerability is involved and they were reported at different times. That means that some of the updates only fixed the first reported problem, while others fixed both problems.

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Linux Advisory Watch is a comprehensive newsletter that outlines the security vulnerabilities that have been announced throughout the week. It includes pointers to updated packages and descriptions of each vulnerability.

* September 5th, 2000 -- Caldera: 'glibc' vulnerability
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/caldera_advisory-688.html

A bug in the parsing of these locale names allows an attacker to
trick glibc into using locale information files provided by the
attacker, which can make an application crash.

ftp://ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/2.3/current/RPMS/
9509340276c43bdcbeee2d95e82b9d03  RPMS/glibc-2.1.1-3.i386.rpm
 

* September 5th, 2000 -- Conectiva: glibc vulnerabilities
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/other_advisory-684.html
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/other_advisory-689.html

Several problems have been found in the glibc code that allow
a local attacker to obtain root privileges.

ftp://atualizacoes.conectiva.com.br/4.0/i386/glibc-2.1.2-14cl.i386.rpm
 
 

Recently two problems have been found in the glibc suite, which
could be used to trick setuid applications to run arbitrary code.

http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/binary-i386/
libc6-dbg_2.0.7.19981211-6.2_i386.deb

MD5 checksum: 23f5aace9db7104163b2422d600d8869
 

* September 7th, 2000 -- Mandrake: 'glibc' vulnerabilities
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/mandrake_advisory-694.html

It is highly probable that some of these bugs can be used
for local root exploits.

ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandrake/updates

* September 5th, 2000 -- Slackware: glibc vulnerabilities
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/slackware_advisory-690.html
 

Three locale-related vulnerabilities with glibc 2.1.3 were recently
reported on BugTraq.  These vulnerabilities could allow local users
to gain root access.

Users of Slackware 7.0, 7.1, and -current are strongly urged to
upgrade to the new glibc packages in the -current branch.

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/
slakware/a1/glibcso.tgz
md5sum: 1119944158 781102 a1/glibcso.tgz

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/
slakware/d1/glibc.tgz
md5sum: 4150671113 22146158 d1/glibc.tgz

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/
slakware/des1/descrypt.tgz
md5sum: 95989487 95843 des1/descrypt.tgz
 
 

The glibc implementations in all SuSE distributions starting with
SuSE-6.0 have multiple security problems where at least one of them
allows any local user to gain root access to the system.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/a1/
shlibs-2.1.3-154.i386.rpm

753176172ebf628c6567c70a9b950933

* September 7th, 2000 -- Trustix: 'glibc' updates.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/other_advisory-695.html

glibc-2.1.3-10tr.i586.rpm
glibc-devel-2.1.3-10tr.i586.rpm
glibc-profile-2.1.3-10tr.i586.rpm
scd-2.1.3-10tr.i586.rpm
ftp://ftp.trustix.com/pub/Trustix/updates/1.1/RPMS/

* September 4th, 2000 -- Debian: 'screen' vulnerability
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/debian_advisory-686.html

A format string bug was recently discovered in screen which can
be used to gain elevated privilages if screen is setuid.

http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-i386/
screen_3.9.5-9_i386.deb

MD5 checksum: 139c65e404139f6681a4e60b4ef708f1
 

* September 3rd, 2000 -- Slackware: 'suidperl' vulnerability.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/slackware_advisory-685.html

A root exploit was found in the /usr/bin/suidperl5.6.0 program that
shipped with the Slackware 7.1 perl.tgz package. It is recommended
that all users of Slackware 7.1 (and -current) upgrade to the
perl.tgz package available in the Slackware current branch.

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/slakware/d1/
1027099174 6464627 ./perl.tgz 0dfc1c46e3dd22033850fc69928588ec
 
 

The configuration file that comes with the package contains
two security relevant errors:

Starting in SuSE-6.0, a section in apache's configuration file
/etc/httpd/httpd.conf reads Alias /cgi-bin-sdb//usr/local/httpd/
cgi-bin/ This allows remote users to read the cgi script sources
of the server, located in /usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/.

Opposing the recommendations on the WebDAV homepage under
http://www.webdav.org /mod_dav/#security, there is no access control
or authentification activated. This should most definitely be
considered a security problem.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/n1/apache-1.3.12-107.i386.rpm
65bac933de7676ad3d8f63b32c608dad
 

* September 6th, 2000 -- SuSE: 'screen' vulnerability
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/suse_advisory-693.html

screen, a tty multiplexer, is installed suid root by default on SuSE
Linux distributions. By supplying a thoughtfully designed string as
the visual bell message, local users can obtain root privilege.
Exploit information has been published on security forums.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/ap1/screen-3.9.8-1.i386.rpm
84b6330f0b9ac7600cc5ec53a9dfdbe9