RHSA-2005:880 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated Perl packages that fix security issues and bugs are now available
for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.

Description

Perl is a high-level programming language commonly used for system
administration utilities and Web programming.

An integer overflow bug was found in Perl's format string processor. It is
possible for an attacker to cause perl to crash or execute arbitrary code
if the attacker is able to process a malicious format string. This issue
is only exploitable through a script which passes arbitrary untrusted
strings to the format string processor. The Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures project assigned the name CVE-2005-3962 to this issue.

Users of Perl are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain backported patches to correct these issues as well as fixes for
several bugs.

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 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 170088 - bits/resource.ph has syntax errors
• BZ - 171111 - (libperl) could not run system-config-printer
• BZ - 172327 - getgrnam() crashes with "Out of memory" if /etc/group contains long lines
• BZ - 174683 - CVE-2005-3962 Perl integer overflow issue
• BZ - 175104 - MakeMaker::MM_Unix doesn't honor LD_RUN_PATH requirements
• BZ - 175129 - missing C standard headers

CVEs

• CVE-2005-3962

References

(none)