Synopsis

Critical: seamonkey security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Critical

Topic

Updated seamonkey packages that fix several security issues are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

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

Description

SeaMonkey is an open source Web browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC
chat client, and HTML editor.

Several flaws were found in the processing of malformed web content. A web
page containing malicious content could cause SeaMonkey to crash or,
potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running
SeaMonkey. (CVE-2009-3072, CVE-2009-3075)

A use-after-free flaw was found in SeaMonkey. An attacker could use this
flaw to crash SeaMonkey or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of the user running SeaMonkey. (CVE-2009-3077)

Dan Kaminsky discovered flaws in the way browsers such as SeaMonkey handle
NULL characters in a certificate. If an attacker is able to get a
carefully-crafted certificate signed by a Certificate Authority trusted by
SeaMonkey, the attacker could use the certificate during a
man-in-the-middle attack and potentially confuse SeaMonkey into accepting
it by mistake. (CVE-2009-2408)

Descriptions in the dialogs when adding and removing PKCS #11 modules were
not informative. An attacker able to trick a user into installing a
malicious PKCS #11 module could use this flaw to install their own
Certificate Authority certificates on a user's machine, making it possible
to trick the user into believing they are viewing a trusted site or,
potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running
SeaMonkey. (CVE-2009-3076)

A flaw was found in the way SeaMonkey displays the address bar when
window.open() is called in a certain way. An attacker could use this flaw
to conceal a malicious URL, possibly tricking a user into believing they
are viewing a trusted site. (CVE-2009-2654)

Dan Kaminsky found that browsers still accept certificates with MD2 hash
signatures, even though MD2 is no longer considered a cryptographically
strong algorithm. This could make it easier for an attacker to create a
malicious certificate that would be treated as trusted by a browser. NSS
(provided by SeaMonkey) now disables the use of MD2 and MD4 algorithms
inside signatures by default. (CVE-2009-2409)

All SeaMonkey users should upgrade to these updated packages, which correct
these issues. After installing the update, SeaMonkey must be restarted for
the changes to take effect.

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/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 3 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 3 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 510197 - CVE-2009-2409 deprecate MD2 in SSL cert validation (Kaminsky)
• BZ - 510251 - CVE-2009-2408 firefox/nss: doesn't handle NULL in Common Name properly
• BZ - 521311 - CVE-2009-2654 firefox: URL bar spoofing vulnerability
• BZ - 521688 - CVE-2009-3072 Firefox 3.5.3 3.0.14 browser engine crashes
• BZ - 521691 - CVE-2009-3075 Firefox 3.5.2 3.0.14 JavaScript engine crashes
• BZ - 521692 - CVE-2009-3076 Firefox 3.0.14 Insufficient warning for PKCS11 module installation and removal
• BZ - 521693 - CVE-2009-3077 Firefox 3.5.3 3.0.14 TreeColumns dangling pointer vulnerability

CVEs

• CVE-2009-2408
• CVE-2009-2409
• CVE-2009-3076
• CVE-2009-3077
• CVE-2009-3075
• CVE-2009-3072
• CVE-2009-2654

References

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

This erratum does not contain any packages.