RHSA-2008:0780 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated coreutils packages that fix a security issue are now available for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

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

Description

The coreutils package contains the core GNU utilities. It is the
combination of the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

The coreutils packages were found to not use the pam_succeed_if Pluggable
Authentication Module (PAM) correctly in the configuration file for the
"su" command. Any local user could use this command to change to a locked
or expired user account if the target account's password was known to the
user running "su". These updated packages, correctly, only allow the root
user to switch to locked or expired accounts using "su". (CVE-2008-1946)

All users of coreutils are advised to upgrade to this updated package,
which resolve this issue.

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 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 - 446488 - CVE-2008-1946 /etc/pam.d/su is wrong in RHEL-4.6

CVEs

• CVE-2008-1946

References

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