__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN 'kcheckpass' Vulnerability [KDE Security Advisory: kcheckpass local root vulnerability] September 16, 2005 22:00 GMT Number P-308 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A serious lock file handling error was found in kcheckpass. PLATFORM: All KDE releases starting from KDE 3.2.0 up to including KDE 3.4.2 Debian 3.1 (sarge) Red Hat Desktop (v. 4) Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, ES, WS (v. 4) DAMAGE: This vulnerability may be used, in some configurations, to gain root access. In order for an exploit to succeed, the directory /var/lock has to be writeable for a user that is allowed to invoke kcheckpass. This is the case on some Linux distributions. SOLUTION: Apply the available security update. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. A local attacker may gain root. ASSESSMENT: ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/p-308.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20050905-1.txt ADDITIONAL LINKS: Debian Security Advisory DSA 815 http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-815 Secunia Advisory SA16692 http://secunia.com/advisories/16692/ Red Hat RHSA-2006:0582-7 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2006-0582.html CVE: http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name= CVE-2005-2494 ______________________________________________________________________________ REVISION HISTORY: 08/11/2006 - revised to a link to Red Hat RHSA-2006:0582-7 for Red Hat Desktop (v. 4) and Enterprise Linux AS, ES, WS (v. 4). [***** Start KDE Security Advisory: kcheckpass local root vulnerability *****] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 KDE Security Advisory: kcheckpass local root vulnerability Original Release Date: 2005-09-05 URL: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20050905-1.txt 0. References CAN-2005-2494 1. Systems affected: All KDE releases starting from KDE 3.2.0 up to including KDE 3.4.2. 2. Overview: Ilja van Sprundel from suresec.org notified the KDE security team about a serious lock file handling error in kcheckpass that can, in some configurations, be used to gain root access. In order for an exploit to succeed, the directory /var/lock has to be writeable for a user that is allowed to invoke kcheckpass. This is the case on some Linux distributions. 3. Impact: A local user can escalate its privileges to the root user. 4. Solution: Source code patches have been made available which fix these vulnerabilities. Contact your OS vendor / binary package provider for information about how to obtain updated binary packages. 5. Patch: Patch for KDE 3.4.2 is available from ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/security_patches : 2065be8baea09c89416385ac5dd892a9 post-3.4.2-kdebase-kcheckpass.diff -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDHJwhvsXr+iuy1UoRAhrmAKCgq+TD9I1lzE1H3vR1f/X2VUoSugCdH3wm GWK+f6AGiG2Eh7rC5JC7fdA= =SCi3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- [***** End KDE Security Advisory: kcheckpass local root vulnerability *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of KDE for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, 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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