A bushel of Linux patches

Today’s bug patches and security alerts:

Red Hat patches memory leak in xft

A bug in the way xft-based applications render text on certain X servers could cause a memory leak. A fix is available. For more, go to:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2002-305.html

Red Hat updates up2date

A flaw in up2date, a tool that automatically looks for and installs Red Hat patches, does not properly check for a valid GPG signature. An attacker could exploit this to trick the machine into downloading and installing malicious code. For more, go to:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2003-255.html

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Immunix patches wuftpd

An off-by-one bug has been found in the popular Washington University FTP Server daemon (wufptd). An attacker could exploit this flaw to gain root privileges on an affected server. For more, go to:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1a.html

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NetBSD warns of OSI network bug

A flaw in the OSI networking kernel for NetBSD could be exploited to cause a denial-of-service against an affected machine. For more, go to:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1b.html

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Conectiva patches wget

A buffer overflow in wget, a tool for retrieving files via FTP and HTTP, could be exploit to run arbitrary code on the affected machine or cause erratic application behavior. For more, go to:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1c.html

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EnGarde, Trustix patch stunnel

A flaw in stunnel, an application for tunneling an unencrypted network connection over a secure connection, does not properly start certain processes, which could be exploited in denial-of-service attack. For more, go to:

EnGarde:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1d.html

Trustix:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1e.html

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Trustix patches postfix

A new version of postfix, a mail transfer agent, is available that fix two vulnerabilities in older versions of the software. One flaw could be exploited in a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against the affected machine. Another flaw could be exploited to use postfix as a distributed DoS tool for launching attacks against random IP addresses. For more, go to:

https://www.nwfusion.com/go2/0811bug1f.html

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OpenPKG patches OpenSSH

A flaw in the openssh PAM authentication module could be exploited to determine if an account name is valid or not. An attacker could use this information to narrow the focus of an attack against a target machine. For more, go to:

https://www.openpkg.org/security/OpenPKG-SA-2003.035-openssh.html

OpenPKG issues fix for perl-www

A cross-scripting vulnerability has been found in the CGI.pm Perl module. A fix is available from OpenPKG. For more, go to:

https://www.openpkg.org/security/OpenPKG-SA-2003.036-perl-www.html

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@Stake warns of flaws in IPNetSentryX and IPNetMonitorX

IPNetSentryX and IPNetMonitorX, network monitoring tools from Sustworks, contain flaws that could allow an unauthorized local user to sniff the network or potentially gain root access to the affected machine. For more, go to:

https://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2003/a080703-1.txt

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Today’s roundup of virus alerts:

Troj/SView-A – A backdoor Trojan horse program that allows third-parties to access the infected machine without authorization. (Sophos)

Panol – A destructive virus that spreads via an e-mail attachment called “VIRUS_BLOCK.EXE”. Instead of doing what the name implies, it stop anti-virus processes and attempts to format the C-drive when the infected machine is restarted. (Panda Software)