RHSA-2003:151 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated tcpdump packages that fix an infinite loop vulnerability and drop
privileges on startup are now available.

Description

Tcpdump is a command-line tool for monitoring network traffic.

A vulnerability exists in tcpdump before 3.7.2 and is related to an
inability to handle unknown RADIUS attributes properly. This vulnerability
allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop).

The Red Hat tcpdump packages advertise that, by default, tcpdump will drop
privileges to user 'pcap'. Due to a compilation error this did not
happen, and tcpdump would run as root unless the '-U' flag was specified.

Users of tcpdump are advised to upgrade to these errata packages, which
contain a patch correcting the RADIUS issue and are compiled so that by
default tcpdump will drop privileges to the 'pcap' user.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

Please note that 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

• BZ - 88881 - CAN-2003-0145 RADUIS tcpdump vulnerability

CVEs

• CVE-2003-0194
• CVE-2003-0145

References

(none)