RHSA-2011:0791 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated tomcat6 packages that fix three security issues and several bugs
are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate
security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores,
which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability
from the CVE links in the References section.

Description

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

It was found that web applications could modify the location of the Tomcat
host's work directory. As web applications deployed on Tomcat have read and
write access to this directory, a malicious web application could use this
flaw to trick Tomcat into giving it read and write access to an arbitrary
directory on the file system. (CVE-2010-3718)

A cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw was found in the Manager application,
used for managing web applications on Tomcat. If a remote attacker could
trick a user who is logged into the Manager application into visiting a
specially-crafted URL, the attacker could perform Manager application tasks
with the privileges of the logged in user. (CVE-2010-4172)

A second cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw was found in the Manager
application. A malicious web application could use this flaw to conduct an
XSS attack, leading to arbitrary web script execution with the privileges
of victims who are logged into and viewing Manager application web pages.
(CVE-2011-0013)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• A bug in the "tomcat6" init script prevented additional Tomcat instances

from starting. As well, running "service tomcat6 start" caused
configuration options applied from "/etc/sysconfig/tomcat6" to be
overwritten with those from "/etc/tomcat6/tomcat6.conf". With this update,
multiple instances of Tomcat run as expected. (BZ#636997)

• The "/usr/share/java/" directory was missing a symbolic link to the

"/usr/share/tomcat6/bin/tomcat-juli.jar" library. Because this library was
mandatory for certain operations (such as running the Jasper JSP
precompiler), the "build-jar-repository" command was unable to compose a
valid classpath. With this update, the missing symbolic link has been
added. (BZ#661244)

• Previously, the "tomcat6" init script failed to start Tomcat with a "This

account is currently not available." message when Tomcat was configured to
run under a user that did not have a valid shell configured as a login
shell. This update modifies the init script to work correctly regardless of
the daemon user's login shell. Additionally, these new tomcat6 packages now
set "/sbin/nologin" as the login shell for the "tomcat" user upon
installation, as recommended by deployment best practices. (BZ#678671)

• Some standard Tomcat directories were missing write permissions for the

"tomcat" group, which could cause certain applications to fail with errors
such as "No output folder". This update adds write permissions for the
"tomcat" group to the affected directories. (BZ#643809)

• The "/usr/sbin/tomcat6" wrapper script used a hard-coded path to the

"catalina.out" file, which may have caused problems (such as for logging
init script output) if Tomcat was being run with a user other than "tomcat"
and with CATALINA_BASE set to a directory other than the default.
(BZ#695284, BZ#697504)

• Stopping Tomcat could have resulted in traceback errors being logged to

"catalina.out" when certain web applications were deployed. (BZ#698624)

Users of Tomcat should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain
backported patches to correct these issues. Tomcat must be restarted for
this update to take effect.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to
use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 636997 - Additionally Created Instances of Tomcat are broken / don't work
• BZ - 643809 - Bad permissions on tomcat folders
• BZ - 656246 - CVE-2010-4172 tomcat: cross-site-scripting vulnerability in the manager application
• BZ - 661244 - Missing tomcat6-juli link in /usr/share/java
• BZ - 675786 - CVE-2011-0013 tomcat: XSS vulnerability in HTML Manager interface
• BZ - 675792 - CVE-2010-3718 tomcat: file permission bypass flaw
• BZ - 678671 - tomcat user requires login shell
• BZ - 695284 - catalina.out path hard-coded in /usr/sbin/tomcat6
• BZ - 697504 - tomcat6-6.0.wrapper redirects init script output to wrong place

CVEs

• CVE-2010-3718
• CVE-2011-0013
• CVE-2010-4172

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate
• http://tomcat.apache.org/security-6.html