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Several security problems have been found in the Apache web server software. It is recommended that all users of Apache upgrade to the latest stable release to fix these problems.

The security problem in the traceroute program as shipped with SuSE Linux distributions is completely different from the one reported on security mailing lists a few days ago (`traceroute -g 1 -g 1') by Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi>. SuSE distributions do not contain this particular traceroute implementation. The problem in our traceroute was discovered independently and reported to us by H D Moore <hdm@secureaustin.com>. The problem in the implementation of traceroute that we ship is a format string parsing bug in a routine that can be used to terminate a line in traceroute's output to easily embed the program in cgi scripts as used for web frontends for traceroute. Using a specially crafted sequence of characters on the commandline, it is possile to trick the traceroute program into running arbitrary code as root.

gnorpm is a graphical user interface to the rpm subsystem for the gnome desktop.

[Updated version: corrected URLs]

[Updated version: corrected URLs]

In versions of the PHP 4 packages before version 4.0.3, several format string bugs could allow properly crafted requests to execute code as the user running PHP scripts on the web server.

In versions of the PHP 3 packages before version 3.0.17, several format string bugs could allow properly crafted requests to execute code as the user running PHP scripts on the web server, particularly if error logging was enabled.

The version of nis as distributed in Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 and 2.2 contains an ypbind package with a security problem.

The first release of this advisory listed a wrongly compiled curl package for i386; this has been replaced with version 6.0-1.1.1 .

The version of curl as distributed with Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 had a bug in the error logging code: when it created an error message it failed to check the size of the buffer allocated for storing the message. This could be exploited by the remote machine by returning an invalid response to a request from curl which overflows the error buffer and trick curl into executing arbitrary code.

In versions of the traceroute package before 1.4a5-3, it is possible for a local user to gain root access by exploiting an argument parsing error.

GNU cfengine is an abstract programming language for system administrators of large heterogeneous networks, used for maintenance and administration. Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi> has found several format string vulnerabilities in syslog() calls that can be abused to either make the cfengine program to segfault and die or to execute arbitrary commands as the user the cfengine process runs as (usually root).

esound, a daemon program for the Gnome desktop, is used for sound replay by various programs such as windowmanagers and other applications. The esound daemon creates a directory /tmp/.esd to host a unix domain socket. Upon startup, the daemon changes the modes of the socket, but a race condition allows an attacker to place a symlink into the directory to point to an arbitrary file belonging to the victim. By consequence, an attacker may be able to change the permissions of any file belonging to the victim. If the victim's userid is root, the attacker may be able to change the modes of any file in the system.

A locally-exploitable security hole was found where a normal user could trick root running GnoRPM into writing to arbitrary files due to a bug in the gnorpm tmp file handling.

In versions of boa before 0.94.8.3, it is possible to access files outside of the server's document root by the use of properly constructed URL requests.

Linux-Mandrake has recently released a Security Advisory (MDKSA-2000:051) covering a race condition in the esound. Debian is not affected by this bug; the bug is specific to the unix domain socket support, which was turned off in stable (2.2/potato) and unstable (woody) on February 16, 2000. Therefore neither the current stable or unstable distribution of Debian is vulnerable to this problem. Debian 2.1 (aka "slink") is also not vulnerable to this problem; the version of esound in Debian 2.1 is 0.2.6, which predates the buggy unix domain socket code.

Updated usermode packages are now available for Red Hat Linux 6.x and 7.

tmpwatch as shipped in Red Hat Linux 6.1, 6.2, and 7.0 uses fork() to recursively process subdirectories, enabling a local user to perform a denial of service attack. Tmpwatch from Red Hat Linux 6.2 and 7.0 also contains an option to allow it to use the fuser command to check for open files before removal. It executed fuser in an insecure fashion, allowing a local root exploit.

a root exploit and several additional bugs in traceroute have been corrected.

Esound, the Gnome sound server, contains a race condition that a malicious user could exploit to change permissions of any file owned by the esound user.