1.133. python

Updated python packages that fix multiple security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.

A flaw was found in the Python urllib and urllib2 libraries where they would not differentiate between different target URLs when handling automatic redirects. This caused Python applications using these modules to follow any new URL that they understood, including the "file://" URL type. This could allow a remote server to force a local Python application to read a local file instead of the remote one, possibly exposing local files that were not meant to be exposed. (CVE-2011-1521)

A race condition was found in the way the Python smtpd module handled new connections. A remote user could use this flaw to cause a Python script using the smtpd module to terminate. (CVE-2010-3493)

An information disclosure flaw was found in the way the Python CGIHTTPServer module processed certain HTTP GET requests. A remote attacker could use a specially-crafted request to obtain the CGI script's source code. (CVE-2011-1015)

A buffer over-read flaw was found in the way the Python Expat parser handled malformed UTF-8 sequences when processing XML files. A specially-crafted XML file could cause Python applications using the Python Expat parser to crash while parsing the file. (CVE-2009-3720)

This update makes Python use the system Expat library rather than its own internal copy; therefore, users must have the version of Expat shipped with RHSA-2009:1625 installed, or a later version, to resolve the CVE-2009-3720 issue.

All Python users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.