- Issued:
- 2003-01-28
- Updated:
- 2003-03-19
RHSA-2003:028 - Security Advisory
Synopsis
pam security update
Type/Severity
Security Advisory: Important
Topic
Updated PAM packages are now available. These packages correct a bug in
pam_xauth's handling of authorization data for the root user.
[Updated 12 March 2003]
Added packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux WS
Description
The pam_xauth module is used to forward xauth information from user to user
in applications such as the su command.
Andreas Beck discovered that pam_xauth will forward authorization
information from the root account to unprivileged users. This could be
used by a local attacker to gain access to an administrator's X session.
To exploit this vulnerability the attacker would have to get the
administrator, as root, to use su to access the account belonging to the
attacker.
Users of pam_xauth are advised to upgrade to these errata packages which
contain a patch which adds ACL (access control list) functionality to
pam_xauth and disallows root forwarding by default.
Thanks to Andreas Beck for reporting this issue.
Solution
Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.
This update is available via Red Hat Network. 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.
Affected Products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 2 ia64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 2 i386
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 2 ia64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 2 i386
Fixes
(none)CVEs
References
(none)
The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.