RHSA-2008:0061 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated setroubleshoot packages that fix two security issues and several
bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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

Description

The setroubleshoot packages provide tools to help diagnose SELinux
problems. When AVC messages occur, an alert is generated that gives
information about the problem, and how to create a resolution.

A flaw was found in the way sealert wrote diagnostic messages to a
temporary file. A local unprivileged user could perform a symbolic link
attack, and cause arbitrary files, writable by other users, to be
overwritten when a victim runs sealert. (CVE-2007-5495)

A flaw was found in the way sealert displayed records from the
setroubleshoot database as unescaped HTML. An local unprivileged attacker
could cause AVC denial events with carefully crafted process or file names,
injecting arbitrary HTML tags into the logs, which could be used as a
scripting attack, or to confuse the user running sealert. (CVE-2007-5496)

Additionally, the following bugs have been fixed in these update packages:

• in certain situations, the sealert process used excessive CPU. These

alerts are now capped at a maximum of 30, D-Bus is used instead of polling,
threads causing excessive wake-up have been removed, and more robust
exception-handling has been added.

• different combinations of the sealert '-a', '-l', '-H', and '-v' options

did not work as documented.

• the SETroubleShoot browser did not allow multiple entries to be deleted.
• the SETroubleShoot browser did not display statements that displayed

whether SELinux was using Enforcing or Permissive mode, particularly when
warning about SELinux preventions.

• in certain cases, the SETroubleShoot browser gave incorrect instructions

regarding paths, and would not display the full paths to files.

• adding an email recipient to the recipients option from the

/etc/setroubleshoot/setroubleshoot.cfg file and then generating an SELinux
denial caused a traceback error. The recipients option has been removed;
email addresses are now managed through the SETroubleShoot browser by
navigating to File -> Edit Email Alert List, or by editing the
/var/lib/setroubleshoot/email_alert_recipients file.

• the setroubleshoot browser incorrectly displayed a period between the

httpd_sys_content_t context and the directory path.

• on the PowerPC architecture, The get_credentials() function in

access_control.py would generate an exception when it called the
socket.getsockopt() function.

• The code which handles path information has been completely rewritten so

that assumptions on path information which were misleading are no longer
made. If the path information is not present, it will be presented as
"<Unknown>".

• setroubleshoot had problems with non-English locales under certain

circumstances, possibly causing a python traceback, an sealert window
pop-up containing an error, a "RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth
exceeded" error after a traceback, or a "UnicodeEncodeError" after a traceback.

• sealert ran even when SELinux was disabled, causing "attempt to open

server connection failed" errors. Sealert now checks whether SELinux is
enabled or disabled.

• the database setroubleshoot maintains was world-readable. The

setroubleshoot database is now mode 600, and is owned by the root user and
group.

• setroubleshoot did not validate requests to set AVC filtering options for

users. In these updated packages, checks ensure that requests originate
from the filter owner.

• the previous setroubleshoot packages required a number of GNOME packages

and libraries. setroubleshoot has therefore been split into 2 packages:
setroubleshoot and setroubleshoot-server.

• a bug in decoding the audit field caused an "Input is not proper UTF-8,

indicate encoding!" error message. The decoding code has been rewritten.

• a file name mismatch in the setroubleshoot init script would cause a

failure to shut down.

Users of setroubleshoot are advised to upgrade to these updated packages,
which resolve 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 - 227806 - setroubleshoot browser doesn't allow multiple entry deletion
• BZ - 240355 - setroubleshoot gives bad suggestions
• BZ - 241543 - Adding recipents entry to config file crashes setroubleshoot
• BZ - 243800 - typo in sealert / setroubleshoot suggestion
• BZ - 244345 - missing filename in setroubleshoot (AVC.get_path() returns incomplete path)
• BZ - 250239 - Runtime Error: maximum recursion depth exceeded
• BZ - 288221 - CVE-2007-5495 EMBARGOED setroubleshoot insecure logging
• BZ - 288271 - CVE-2007-5496 setroubleshoot log injection
• BZ - 288881 - setroubleshoot failure when httpd is trying to access rpm_log_t
• BZ - 312281 - setroubleshoot requires gnome to run
• BZ - 431768 - setroubleshoot - audit_listener_database.xml:3029: parser error in xmlParseDoc()
• BZ - 436564 - socket.getsockopt() on ppc generates exception

CVEs

• CVE-2007-5495
• CVE-2007-5496

References

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