_________________________________________________________ U. S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Center ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Red Hat "ncurses" Vulnerability [Red Hat RHSA-2002:020-05] February 26, 2002 23:00 GMT Number M-046 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A problem has been found in ncurses version 5.0 that could cause a buffer overflow. PLATFORM: Red Hat Linux 7.0 - alpha, i386 Red Hat Linux 7.1 - alpha, i386 Red Hat Linux 7.2 - i386 DAMAGE: This vulnerability could be locally exploited if the library is linked into a program that runs setuid or setgid, resulting in an upgrade of privileges up to and including root. SOLUTION: Update ncurses4 compatability packages. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. An individual would need a local account ASSESSMENT: and damage depends on the context of script using the ncurses libraries. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/m-046.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: https://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2002-020.html ______________________________________________________________________________ [***** Start Red Hat RHSA-2002:020-05 *****] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat Security Advisory Synopsis: Updated ncurses4 compat packages are available Advisory ID: RHSA-2002:020-05 Issue date: 2002-01-29 Updated on: 2002-02-19 Product: Red Hat Linux Keywords: ncurses4 buffer overrun overflow ncurses5 Cross references: Obsoletes: --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Topic: Updated ncurses4 compatability packages which fix a potential security problem are available. 2. Relevant releases/architectures: Red Hat Linux 7.0 - alpha, i386 Red Hat Linux 7.1 - alpha, i386 Red Hat Linux 7.2 - i386 3. Problem description: The ncurses library provides a terminal-independent method of screen handling. A problem has been found in ncurses version 5.0 that could cause a buffer overflow. This overflow could be locally exploited if the library is linked into a program that runs setuid or setgid. Red Hat Linux ships with a compatibility package 'ncurses4' that is actually based on ncurses version 5.0 but has been made ABI compatible with ncurses 4. No programs that ship with Red Hat Linux are exploitable. A program could only be exploited if it uses the ncurses 4 compatiblity package and if it is run setuid or setgid. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2002-0062 to this issue. Thanks to Daniel Jacobowitz at MontaVista Software for alerting us to this issue. 4. Solution: Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata relevant to your system have been applied. To update all RPMs for your particular architecture, run: rpm -Fvh [filenames] where [filenames] is a list of the RPMs you wish to upgrade. Only those RPMs which are currently installed will be updated. Those RPMs which are not installed but included in the list will not be updated. Note that you can also use wildcards (*.rpm) if your current directory *only* contains the desired RPMs. Please note that this update is also available via Red Hat Network. Many people find this an easier way to apply updates. To use Red Hat Network, launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command: up2date This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate RPMs being upgraded on your system. 5. Bug IDs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla for more info): 6. RPMs required: Red Hat Linux 7.0: SRPMS: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm alpha: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/alpha/ncurses4-5.0-5.alpha.rpm i386: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm Red Hat Linux 7.1: SRPMS: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.1/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm alpha: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.1/en/os/alpha/ncurses4-5.0-5.alpha.rpm i386: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.1/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm Red Hat Linux 7.2: SRPMS: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.2/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm i386: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.2/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm 7. Verification: MD5 sum Package Name -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53856e0c3219de2fcb4e56600b4eb3b9 7.0/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm b470c5cf9eaaa4710a09e114aced3f4d 7.0/en/os/alpha/ncurses4-5.0-5.alpha.rpm b5ad8bc36c129534192e0dbce582f5ed 7.0/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm 53856e0c3219de2fcb4e56600b4eb3b9 7.1/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm b470c5cf9eaaa4710a09e114aced3f4d 7.1/en/os/alpha/ncurses4-5.0-5.alpha.rpm b5ad8bc36c129534192e0dbce582f5ed 7.1/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm 53856e0c3219de2fcb4e56600b4eb3b9 7.2/en/os/SRPMS/ncurses4-5.0-5.src.rpm b5ad8bc36c129534192e0dbce582f5ed 7.2/en/os/i386/ncurses4-5.0-5.i386.rpm These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat, Inc. for security. Our key is available at: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/pgpkey.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 8. References: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0062 Copyright(c) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc. [***** End Red Hat RHSA-2002:020-05 *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Red Hat, Inc. for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Center, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among computer security teams worldwide. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. 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