RHSA-2003:310 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated fileutils packages that close a potential denial of service
vulnerability are now available.

Description

The fileutils package contains several basic system utilities. One of
these utilities is the "ls" program, which is used to list information
about files and directories.

Georgi Guninski discovered a memory starvation denial of service
vulnerability in the ls program. It is possible to make ls allocate a
huge amount of memory by specifying certain command line arguments. This
vulnerability is remotely exploitable through services like wu-ftpd, which
pass user arguments to ls. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0854 to this issue.

A non-exploitable integer overflow in ls has been discovered. It is
possible to make ls crash by specifying certain command line arguments.
This vulnerability is remotely exploitable through services like wu-ftpd,
which pass user arguments to ls. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0853 to this issue.

Users are advised to update to these erratum packages, which contain
backported security patches that correct these vulnerabilities.

These packages also add support for the O_DIRECT flag, which controls the
use of synchronous I/O on file systems such as OCFS.

Solution

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

To update all RPMs for your particular architecture, run:

rpm -Fvh [filenames]

where [filenames] is a list of the RPMs you wish to upgrade. Only those
RPMs which are currently installed will be updated. Those RPMs which are
not installed but included in the list will not be updated. Note that you
can also use wildcards (*.rpm) if your current directory *only* contains the
desired RPMs.

Please note that this update is also available via Red Hat Network. Many
people find this an easier way to apply updates. 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.

If up2date fails to connect to Red Hat Network due to SSL Certificate
Errors, you need to install a version of the up2date client with an updated
certificate. The latest version of up2date is available from the Red Hat
FTP site and may also be downloaded directly from the RHN website:

https://rhn.redhat.com/help/latest-up2date.pxt

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 - 102006 - fileutils needs O_DIRECT support for OCFS
• BZ - 107821 - CAN-2003-0853/0854 DoS in services that use "ls"

CVEs

• CVE-2003-0854
• CVE-2003-0853

References

(none)