Topic

Updated vixie-cron packages that fix a privilege escalation issue are now
available.

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

Description

The vixie-cron package contains the Vixie version of cron. Cron is a
standard UNIX daemon that runs specified programs at scheduled times.

A privilege escalation flaw was found in the way Vixie Cron runs programs;
vixie-cron does not properly verify an attempt to set the current process
user id succeeded. It was possible for a malicious local users who
exhausted certain limits to execute arbitrary commands as root via cron.
(CVE-2006-2607)

All users of vixie-cron should upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain a backported patch to correct 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 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 - 193146 - CVE-2006-2607 Jobs start from root when pam_limits enabled

CVEs

• CVE-2006-2607

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important