RHSA-2007:0368 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated tcpdump packages that fix a security issue and functionality bugs
are now available.

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

Description

Tcpdump is a command line tool for monitoring network traffic.

Moritz Jodeit discovered a denial of service bug in the tcpdump IEEE 802.11
processing code. If a certain link type was explicitly specified, an
attacker could inject a carefully crafted frame onto the IEEE 802.11
network that could crash a running tcpdump session. (CVE-2007-1218)

An integer overflow flaw was found in tcpdump's BGP processing code. An
attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privilege of the pcap user
by injecting a crafted frame onto the network. (CVE-2007-3798)

In addition, the following bugs have been addressed:

• The arpwatch service initialization script would exit prematurely,

returning an incorrect successful exit status and preventing the status
command from running in case networking is not available.

• Tcpdump would not drop root privileges completely when launched with the
• C option. This might have been abused by an attacker to gain root

privileges in case a security problem was found in tcpdump. Users of
tcpdump are encouraged to specify meaningful arguments to the -Z option in
case they want tcpdump to write files with privileges other than of the
pcap user.

Users of tcpdump are advised to upgrade to these erratum packages, which
contain backported patches that correct these issues.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 232347 - CVE-2007-1218 tcpdump denial of service
• BZ - 237779 - Wrong init script
• BZ - 241677 - tcpdump -Z -C should drop root privileges completely
• BZ - 250275 - CVE-2007-3798 tcpdump BGP integer overflow

CVEs

• CVE-2007-3798
• CVE-2007-1218

References

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