______________________________________________________________________________

                        SuSE Security Announcement

        Package:  ypserv prior 1.3.9
        Date:     Tue Sep 28 08:38:50 CEST 1999
        Affected: all linux distributions using the ypserv package
______________________________________________________________________________

A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using
this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s).

Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as
well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue.

Please note, that that we provide this information on "as-is" basis only.
There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or
incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of
the update package.
_____________________________________________________________________________

1. Problem Description

  The package ypserv is the former "yellow pages", now called NIS
  information service, which is used for e.g. central network user account
  management.
  Several vulnerability exists: ypserv prior 1.3.9 allows an administrator
  in the NIS domain to inject password tables; rpc.yppasswd prior 1.3.6.92
  has got a buffer overflow in the md5 hash generation [SuSE linux is
  unaffected by this, other linux falvors are]; rpc.yppasswdd prior 1.3.9
  allows users to change GECO and login shell values of other users.

2. Impact

  If administrator access to one server in the NIS domain is compromised,
  access to the whole domain can be achieved.
  On some linux distributions other than SuSE, The rpc.yppasswdd service
  may halt unexpectedly. It is theoretically possible to execute arbitary
  code on these systems too.
  User information can be changed and restricted accounts opened.

3. Solution

  Updated the package from our FTP server.
______________________________________________________________________________

Here are the md5 checksums of the upgrade packages, please verify these
before installing the new packages:

abe34d8d1831550059b3fad160fe41f5  ypserv-1.3.9-0.i386.rpm   (6.1)
6937d10896d2b5beb18471491ca57781  ypserv-1.3.9-0.alpha.rpm  (AXP)
19472f128099cb1e311f2db247acd39f  ypserv-1.3.9-0.i386.rpm   (6.2)

For SuSE 6.0 users: please use the 6.1 version.
______________________________________________________________________________

You will find the update on our ftp-Server:
      
Webpage for patches:
  http://www.suse.de/patches/index.html

or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors:
  http://www.suse.de/ftp.html
  
______________________________________________________________________________