______________________________________________________________________________

                        SuSE Security Announcement

        Package:                hypermail
        Announcement-ID:        SuSE-SA:2003:0012
        Date:                   Thursday, Feb 27th 2003 18:30 MET
        Affected products:      7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 8.1
        Vulnerability Type:     remote system compromise
        Severity (1-10):        4
        SuSE default package:   no
        Cross References:       CAN-2003-0025

    Content of this advisory:
        1) security vulnerability resolved: several bugs after source code
                                            review
           problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
        2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds:
             - vnc
             - w3m
        3) standard appendix (further information)

______________________________________________________________________________

1)  problem description, brief discussion, solution, upgrade information

    Hypermail is a tool to convert a Unix mail-box file to a set of cross-    referenced HTML documents.
    During an internal source code review done by Thomas Biege several bugs
    where found in hypermail and its tools. These bugs allow remote code
    execution, local tmp race conditions, denial-of-service conditions and
    read access to files belonging to the host hypermail is running on.
    Additionally the mail CGI program can be abused by spammers as email-
    relay and should thus be disabled.

    There is no temporary fix known other then disabling hypermail. Please
    download and install the new packages from our FTP servers.

    Please download the update package for your distribution and verify its
    integrity by the methods listed in section 3) of this announcement.
    Then, install the package using the command "rpm -Fhv file.rpm" to apply
    the update.
    Our maintenance customers are being notified individually. The packages
    are being offered to install from the maintenance web.



    Intel i386 Platform:

    SuSE-8.1:
      
      a4b683703b65cb65d0d1b246c2bf652d
    patch rpm(s):
      
      9e087a97c250c8987dda03da43e0dd1e
    source rpm(s):
      
      9d95d9872a3ed98a4dbff25e952335d7

    SuSE-8.0:
      
      53bdfc3ca1ab0c504f460ac7a18ba42e
    source rpm(s):
      
      be0df42b666fc59e38babd671479d2f1

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      81194dcbb3cf149f67eac9948dd79db9
    source rpm(s):
      
      9a02ce79e81bab281c418070fa91dbde

    SuSE-7.2:
      
      d61f52df6c995b65e16a4141b1b7efa1
    source rpm(s):
      
      66b65eed8f2daefde8115abf77511bba

    SuSE-7.1:
      
      698338c7d9b8961ec3d4f4ab99ee2436
    source rpm(s):
      
      8db31cd4981ee84a0333ec8200443bef



    Sparc Platform:

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      341757885457f2e4b018dbb132f1a8f8
    source rpm(s):
      
      cdc92a18900996524768914c79bf20d9




    AXP Alpha Platform:

    SuSE-7.1:
      
      980f217c12affcb3c0a6d0fd916a5115
    source rpm(s):
      
      a2242ecc8ba2a13c3d18ca94e6ba23f0



    PPC Power PC Platform:

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      6c7a197fe18a95b7594b2cd7b572837a
    source rpm(s):
      
      e370de5432545f06731c9f841bc84054

    SuSE-7.1:
      
      64b3be05678f4789985824e31f8335d2
    source rpm(s):
      
      4cd2b65522738594d0b60333f807b8b2




______________________________________________________________________________

2)  Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:

  - vnc
    VNC (Virtual Network Computing) uses a weak cookie generation process
    which can be exploited by an attacker to bypass authentication.
    New packages are currently being tested and will be available on our
    FTP servers soon.

  - w3m
    The textbased web-browser w3m does not properly escape HTML tags.
    A malicious HTML page or img alt attribute may lead to information
    leakage. New packages will be available soon.

______________________________________________________________________________

3)  standard appendix: authenticity verification, additional information

  - Package authenticity verification:

    SuSE update packages are available on many mirror ftp servers all over
    the world. While this service is being considered valuable and important
    to the free and open source software community, many users wish to be
    sure about the origin of the package and its content before installing
    the package. There are two verification methods that can be used
    independently from each other to prove the authenticity of a downloaded
    file or rpm package:
    1) md5sums as provided in the (cryptographically signed) announcement.
    2) using the internal gpg signatures of the rpm package.

    1) execute the command
        md5sum 
       after you downloaded the file from a SuSE ftp server or its mirrors.
       Then, compare the resulting md5sum with the one that is listed in the
       announcement. Since the announcement containing the checksums is
       cryptographically signed (usually using the key security@suse.de),
       the checksums show proof of the authenticity of the package.
       We disrecommend to subscribe to security lists which cause the
       email message containing the announcement to be modified so that
       the signature does not match after transport through the mailing
       list software.
       Downsides: You must be able to verify the authenticity of the
       announcement in the first place. If RPM packages are being rebuilt
       and a new version of a package is published on the ftp server, all
       md5 sums for the files are useless.

    2) rpm package signatures provide an easy way to verify the authenticity
       of an rpm package. Use the command
        rpm -v --checksig 
       to verify the signature of the package, where  is the
       filename of the rpm package that you have downloaded. Of course,
       package authenticity verification can only target an un-installed rpm
       package file.
       Prerequisites:
        a) gpg is installed
        b) The package is signed using a certain key. The public part of this
           key must be installed by the gpg program in the directory
           ~/.gnupg/ under the user's home directory who performs the
           signature verification (usually root). You can import the key
           that is used by SuSE in rpm packages for SuSE Linux by saving
           this announcement to a file ("announcement.txt") and
           running the command (do "su -" to be root):
            gpg --batch; gpg < announcement.txt | gpg --import
           SuSE Linux distributions version 7.1 and thereafter install the
           key "build@suse.de" upon installation or upgrade, provided that
           the package gpg is installed. The file containing the public key
           is placed at the top-level directory of the first CD (pubring.gpg)
           and at   .


  - SuSE runs two security mailing lists to which any interested party may
    subscribe:

    suse-security@suse.com
        -   general/linux/SuSE security discussion.
            All SuSE security announcements are sent to this list.
            To subscribe, send an email to
                <suse-security-subscribe@suse.com>.

    suse-security-announce@suse.com
        -   SuSE's announce-only mailing list.
            Only SuSE's security announcements are sent to this list.
            To subscribe, send an email to
                <suse-security-announce-subscribe@suse.com>.

    For general information or the frequently asked questions (faq)
    send mail to:
        <suse-security-info@suse.com> or
        <suse-security-faq@suse.com> respectively.

    ====================================================================    SuSE's security contact is <security@suse.com> or <security@suse.de>.
    The <security@suse.de> public key is listed below.
    ====================================================================______________________________________________________________________________

    The information in this advisory may be distributed or reproduced,
    provided that the advisory is not modified in any way. In particular,
    it is desired that the clear-text signature shows proof of the
    authenticity of the text.
    SuSE Linux AG makes no warranties of any kind whatsoever with respect
    to the information contained in this security advisory.

Type Bits/KeyID    Date       User ID
pub  2048R/3D25D3D9 1999-03-06 SuSE Security Team <security@suse.de>
pub  1024D/9C800ACA 2000-10-19 SuSE Package Signing Key <build@suse.de>