Red Hat alert: XChat can pass URLs from IRC to a shell

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                   Red Hat, Inc. Security Advisory

Synopsis:          XChat can pass URLs from IRC to a shell
Advisory ID:       RHSA-2000:055-03
Issue date:        2000-08-22
Updated on:        2000-08-23
Product:           Red Hat Linux
Keywords:          XChat IRC shell
Cross references:  N/A
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1. Topic:

A new XChat package is available that fixes a possible
security hole.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Linux 6.2 - i386, alpha, sparc

3. Problem description:

XChat allows users to right-click on a URL appearing 
in an IRC discussion and select "Open in Browser." To 
open the URL in a browser, XChat passes it to /bin/sh.
So, a malicious URL could execute arbitrary shell commands
as the user running XChat. This errata changes XChat to 
bypass the shell and execute the browser directly.

4. Solution:

For each RPM for your particular architecture, run:

rpm -Fvh [filename]

where filename is the name of the RPM.

5. Bug IDs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla for more info):

N/A

6. RPMs required:

Red Hat Linux 6.2:

sparc:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/sparc/xchat-1.4.0-2.sparc.rpm

alpha:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/alpha/xchat-1.4.0-2.alpha.rpm

i386:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/i386/xchat-1.4.0-2.i386.rpm

sources:
ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/SRPMS/xchat-1.4.0-2.src.rpm

7. Verification:

MD5 sum                           Package Name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
0642e627980c723b64a865662b27c638  6.2/SRPMS/xchat-1.4.0-2.src.rpm
79491287b1b683bd882f5ddcf0429018  6.2/alpha/xchat-1.4.0-2.alpha.rpm
285f31993a4084659c38b13d3f8f9c41  6.2/i386/xchat-1.4.0-2.i386.rpm
5878e8cd14c2aacb59ea3d05e379ca67  6.2/sparc/xchat-1.4.0-2.sparc.rpm

These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat, Inc. for security.  Our key
is available at:
    http://www.redhat.com/corp/contact.html

You can verify each package with the following command:
    rpm --checksig  

If you only wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or
tampered with, examine only the md5sum with the following command:
    rpm --checksig --nogpg 

8. References:

Reported to BUGTRAQ by Zenith Parsec.


Copyright(c) 2000 Red Hat, Inc.