Apache HTTP Server 1.3.33 Released

The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache HTTP Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.33 of the Apache HTTP Server ("Apache"). This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.33 as compared to 1.3.31 (1.3.32 was not formally released). The Announcement is also available in German and Japanese from:

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html.de

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.txt.ja

This version of Apache is principally a bug and security fix release. A partial summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this document. A full listing of changes can be found in the CHANGES file. Of particular note is that 1.3.33 addresses and fixes 2 potential security issues:

• CAN-2004-0940 (cve.mitre.org)
  
  
  Fix potential buffer overflow with escaped characters in SSI tag string.
• CAN-2004-0492 (cve.mitre.org)
  Reject responses from a remote server if sent an invalid (negative) Content-Length.

We consider Apache 1.3.33 to be the best version of Apache 1.3 available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.

Apache 1.3.33 is available for download from

http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi

Binary distributions are available from

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/

This service utilizes the network of mirrors listed at:

http://www.apache.org/mirrors/

Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list of changes.

As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary distributions are only provided for your convenience and current distributions for specific platforms are not always available. Win32 binary distributions are based on the Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology. While development continues to make this installation method more robust, questions should be directed to the news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows newsgroup.

For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html

In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider range of supported platforms, including Windows 95/98 and NT (which fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded platforms.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APACHE USERS: Apache 1.3 was designed for Unix OS variants. While the ports to non-Unix platforms (such as Win32, Netware or OS2) are of an acceptable quality, Apache 1.3 is not optimized for these platforms. Security, stability, or performance issues on these non-Unix ports do not generally apply to the Unix version, due to software's Unix origin.

Apache 2.0 has been structured for multiple operating systems from its inception, by introducing the Apache Portability Library and MPM modules. Users on non-Unix platforms are strongly encouraged to move up to Apache 2.0 for better performance, stability and security on their platforms.

Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its variants.

Apache 1.3.33 Major changes

Security vulnerabilities

The main security vulnerabilities addressed in 1.3.33 are:

• CAN-2004-0940 (cve.mitre.org)
  Fix potential buffer overflow with escaped characters in SSI tag string.
• CAN-2004-0492 (cve.mitre.org)
  Reject responses from a remote server if sent an invalid (negative) Content-Length.

New features

New features that relate to specific platforms:

• Win32: Improve error reporting after a failed attempt to spawn a piped log process or rewrite map process.

New features that relate to specific platforms:

• Added new compile-time flag: UCN_OFF_HONOR_PHYSICAL_PORT. It controls how UseCanonicalName Off determines the port value if the client doesn't provide one in the Host header. If defined during compilation, UseCanonicalName Off will use the physical port number to generate the canonical name. If not defined, it tries the current Port value followed by the default port for the current scheme.

Bugs fixed

The following bugs were found in Apache 1.3.31 (or earlier) and have been fixed in Apache 1.3.33:

• mod_rewrite: Fix query string handling for proxied URLs. PR 14518.
• mod_rewrite: Fix 0 bytes write into random memory position. PR 31036.



• mod_digest: Fix nonce string calculation since 1.3.31 which would force re-authentication for every connection if AuthDigestRealmSeed was not configured. PR 30920.



• Fix trivial bug in mod_log_forensic that caused the child to seg fault when certain invalid requests were fired at it with forensic logging is enabled. PR 29313.



• No longer breaks mod_dav, frontpage and others. Repair a patch in 1.3.31 which prevented discarding the request body for requests that will be keptalive but are not currently keptalive. PR 29237.