RHSA-2013:0871 - Security Advisory

Topic

Updated tomcat6 and tomcat7 packages that fix one security issue are now
available for JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2.0.0 for Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5 and 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having
important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the
CVE link in the References section.

Description

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

A flaw was found in the way the tomcat6 and tomcat7 init scripts handled
the tomcat6-initd.log and tomcat7-initd.log log files. A malicious web
application deployed on Tomcat could use this flaw to perform a symbolic
link attack to change the ownership of an arbitrary system file to that of
the tomcat user, allowing them to escalate their privileges to root.
(CVE-2013-1976)

Note: With this update, tomcat6-initd.log and tomcat7-initd.log have been
moved to the /var/log/ directory.

Red Hat would like to thank Simon Fayer of Imperial College London for
reporting this issue.

Warning: Before applying the update, back up your existing JBoss Enterprise
Web Server installation (including all applications and configuration
files).

Users of Tomcat should upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve
this issue. 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/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

• JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 for RHEL 6 x86_64
• JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 for RHEL 6 i386
• JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 for RHEL 5 x86_64
• JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 for RHEL 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 927622 - CVE-2013-1976 tomcat: Improper TOMCAT_LOG management in init script (DoS, ACE)

CVEs

• CVE-2013-1976

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important