RHSA-2009:1562 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated tomcat packages that fix several security issues are now available
for Red Hat Application Server v2.

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

Description

Apache Tomcat is a servlet container for the Java Servlet and JavaServer
Pages (JSP) technologies.

It was discovered that the Red Hat Security Advisory RHSA-2007:0876 did not
address all possible flaws in the way Tomcat handles certain characters and
character sequences in cookie values. A remote attacker could use this flaw
to obtain sensitive information, such as session IDs, and then use this
information for session hijacking attacks. (CVE-2007-5333)

Note: The fix for the CVE-2007-5333 flaw changes the default cookie
processing behavior: With this update, version 0 cookies that contain
values that must be quoted to be valid are automatically changed to version
1 cookies. To reactivate the previous, but insecure behavior, add the
following entry to the "/etc/tomcat5/catalina.properties" file:

org.apache.tomcat.util.http.ServerCookie.VERSION_SWITCH=false

It was discovered that request dispatchers did not properly normalize user
requests that have trailing query strings, allowing remote attackers to
send specially-crafted requests that would cause an information leak.
(CVE-2008-5515)

A flaw was found in the way the Tomcat AJP (Apache JServ Protocol)
connector processes AJP connections. An attacker could use this flaw to
send specially-crafted requests that would cause a temporary denial of
service. (CVE-2009-0033)

It was discovered that the error checking methods of certain authentication
classes did not have sufficient error checking, allowing remote attackers
to enumerate (via brute force methods) usernames registered with
applications running on Tomcat when FORM-based authentication was used.
(CVE-2009-0580)

A cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw was found in the examples calendar
application. With some web browsers, remote attackers could use this flaw
to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the "time" parameter.
(CVE-2009-0781)

It was discovered that web applications containing their own XML parsers
could replace the XML parser Tomcat uses to parse configuration files. A
malicious web application running on a Tomcat instance could read or,
potentially, modify the configuration and XML-based data of other web
applications deployed on the same Tomcat instance. (CVE-2009-0783)

Users of Tomcat should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain
backported patches to resolve these issues. Tomcat must be restarted for
this update 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 Application Server v.2 2 x86_64
• Red Hat Application Server v.2 2 ppc
• Red Hat Application Server v.2 2 ia64
• Red Hat Application Server v.2 2 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 427766 - CVE-2007-5333 Improve cookie parsing for tomcat5
• BZ - 489028 - CVE-2009-0781 tomcat: XSS in Apache Tomcat calendar application
• BZ - 493381 - CVE-2009-0033 tomcat6 Denial-Of-Service with AJP connection
• BZ - 503978 - CVE-2009-0580 tomcat6 Information disclosure in authentication classes
• BZ - 504153 - CVE-2009-0783 tomcat XML parser information disclosure
• BZ - 504753 - CVE-2008-5515 tomcat request dispatcher information disclosure vulnerability

CVEs

• CVE-2009-0781
• CVE-2007-5333
• CVE-2009-0033
• CVE-2009-0580
• CVE-2009-0783
• CVE-2008-5515

References

• http://tomcat.apache.org/security-5.html
• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important