Topic

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

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Low 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

Automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant
with the GNU Coding Standards.

It was found that the distcheck rule in Automake-generated Makefiles made a
directory world-writable when preparing source archives. If a malicious,
local user could access this directory, they could execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the user running "make distcheck". (CVE-2012-3386)

Red Hat would like to thank Jim Meyering for reporting this issue. Upstream
acknowledges Stefano Lattarini as the original reporter.

All automake 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 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/articles/11258

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 Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 838286 - CVE-2012-3386 automake: locally exploitable "make distcheck" bug

CVEs

• CVE-2012-3386

References

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