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5.2. abrt and libreport

Updated abrt and libreport packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool) is a tool to help users to detect defects in applications and to create a bug report with all the information needed by a maintainer to fix it. It uses a plug-in system to extend its functionality. libreport provides an API for reporting different problems in applications to different bug targets, such as Bugzilla, FTP, and Trac.

Security Fixes

CVE-2012-5659
It was found that the /usr/libexec/abrt-action-install-debuginfo-to-abrt-cache tool did not sufficiently sanitize its environment variables. This could lead to Python modules being loaded and run from non-standard directories (such as /tmp/). A local attacker could use this flaw to escalate their privileges to that of the abrt user.
CVE-2012-5660
A race condition was found in the way ABRT handled the directories used to store information about crashes. A local attacker with the privileges of the abrt user could use this flaw to perform a symbolic link attack, possibly allowing them to escalate their privileges to root.
Red Hat would like to thank Martin Carpenter of Citco for reporting the CVE-2012-5660 issue. CVE-2012-5659 was discovered by Miloslav Trmač of Red Hat.
All users of abrt and libreport are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct these issues.