RHSA-2009:1642 - Security Advisory

Topic

An updated acpid package that fixes one security issue is now available for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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

Description

acpid is a daemon that dispatches ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface) events to user-space programs.

It was discovered that acpid could create its log file ("/var/log/acpid")
with random permissions on some systems. A local attacker could use this
flaw to escalate their privileges if the log file was created as
world-writable and with the setuid or setgid bit set. (CVE-2009-4033)

Please note that this flaw was due to a Red Hat-specific patch
(acpid-1.0.4-fd.patch) included in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 acpid
package.

Users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which contains a
backported patch to correct 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/docs/DOC-11259

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 for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.4 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 Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 515062 - /var/log/acpid has improper permissions
• BZ - 542926 - CVE-2009-4033 acpid: log file created with random permissions

CVEs

• CVE-2009-4033

References

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