SuSE: 'openssh' Input Validation Vulnerability
Summary
______________________________________________________________________________
SuSE Security Announcement
Package: openssh
Announcement-ID: SuSE-SA:2002:024
Date: Tuesday, Jul 2nd 2002 22:00 MEST
Affected products: 6.4, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0
SuSE Linux Database Server,
SuSE eMail Server III,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server,
SuSE Linux Firewall on CD
Vulnerability Type: possible remote access
Severity (1-10): 3
SuSE default package: yes
Content of this advisory:
1) security vulnerability resolved: openssh
problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds
3) standard appendix (further information)
______________________________________________________________________________
1) problem description, brief discussion, solution, upgrade information
SuSE Security has issued two warnings and one SuSE Security Announcement
on 25th and 26th of June concerning the vulnerabilities found in the
openssh package that is contained and installed by default on most SuSE
products. For a few days, the nature of the errors were unknown to the
public, making it difficult for distributors to provide proper solutions
against the problem. Now that details of the errors have been disclosed,
we hereby re-release SuSE Security Announcement SuSE-SA:2002:023 (openssh)
under a new announcement ID with links to a set of update packages that
represent SuSE's permanent fix for the problems found.
After closer investigation it turned out that the packages in SuSE
products were not vulnerable to the problems if the admin did not change
the configuration file of the secure shell daemon (/etc/ssh/sshd_config).
In particular, the administrator must actively have set the sshd_config
option PAMAuthenticationViaKbdInt to "yes" for the installation to become
vulnerable. Since the SuSE openssh packages are compiled without S/KEY
support, they are not vulnerable to the second bug that is triggered by
the option ChallengeResponseAuthentication if it is set to "yes" (default).
The two configuration options correspond to the two security problems
found in openssh.
Our SuSE Linux distributions have seen a version upgrade from version
2.9.9p2 to 3.3p1 on Tuesday last week. In order to provide properly
functioning packages for our products, we have decided to return to the
commonly known stable version 2.9.9p2 with the necessary patch to fix
the vulnerability for the SuSE Linux distributions 6.4 up to 7.3 and
for our server products. SuSE Linux 8.0 came with the newer version
3.0.2p1 and will therefore be upgraded to openssh-3.4p1.
We think that adding the patches to the existing versions without
a version upgrade is best-service for our customers because we can
provide a solution that we know not to break anything else.
For more information about the bugs in openssh please visit the openssh
project homepage at OpenSSH and read the SuSE Security
Announcements at SUSE – Open-Source-Lösungen für Enterprise Server und Cloud | SUSE
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.
SPECIAL INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
================================== * For SuSE Linux 6.4 through 7.3, the now offered packages are a version
downgrade. The rpm command refuses to install the package unless you
either use the "--force --nodeps" or the "--oldpackage" commandline
option in addition to the "-Fhv" option.
* For the update package to become effective, you have to restart the
running parent ssh daemon with the following command:
rcsshd stop ; rcsshd start
If you perform the update and the daemon restart via a remote secure
shell connection, you might want to play safe by running the command
echo "rcsshd stop; rcsshd start"|at now + 3 minutes
from a root shell. If your running instance of sshd gets killed for
some reason, then your sshd will start again after three minutes.
Afterwards, make sure that remote login to your host is possible.
Note:
===== In addition to the usual update packages, we have started providing
"patch" packages a few days ago. The patch-rpm is an addition to the
standard rpm package that consists of the binary changes to the package
only. As such, these patch-rpm packages consume considerably less space
to save resources during download and storage.
We will officially announce the availability of this new packaging
technique at SuSE shortly.
i386 Intel Platform:
SuSE-8.0
94c4a554b59902816347a090cd0f6868
SuSE-8.0
e935b74725f6c5b336a56c6a2be47d9b
source rpm:
4ea70c5f1e15343b984c5bbc1891cbbb
SuSE-7.3
d00552391dd7c7b1bafbb6199002741b
source rpm:
84a7ce0f267a94bf2accf6b6fd668bb8
SuSE-7.2
3d2afbcf5c2b2d85f4d3209e773d4877
source rpm:
49bab0993be8dd2742b4eac849b818a6
SuSE-7.1
38f3dc8257b5bc20b7853b3537ce8cbb
source rpm:
689ab0e50631d88c207c68be86fcde3b
SuSE-7.0
0e280e54f4b8f40869ba30a6445cefe7
source rpm:
5f9cc1e1b595a5e96ca1c5197a2ce708
SuSE-6.4
5dceb6fedf88887bb2fcfe585307f2ed
source rpm:
4f0fb935353b25560e155a8e0853b728
Sparc Platform:
SuSE-7.3
804425b14c394ed1a645602257a0f412
source rpm:
6eea48b1f6aef53a755938bcd7306378
SuSE-7.1
25979bd61822c84c4c3275cc99b5e386
source rpm:
d1228bb5e26d69eedbf061646a67271c
SuSE-7.0
3d3a4e3cf0bd0768fa00460f52ed8d89
source rpm:
c2b869d59828ea318323bea708b87975
AXP Alpha Platform:
SuSE-7.1
92447fd373aab8e8c0265f5b17202ebd
source rpm:
755bb8485731155878efb56b621f9b1d
SuSE-7.0
ecbd5a39d693263985a3714c726beb90
source rpm:
67f9fcbe7ae123d9ba91a652f17a6d4d
SuSE-6.4
6b2336c4e0f0f41b1e853d1c99e99b51
source rpm:
78f6cd253479161a582e1edbb490059e
PPC Power PC Platform:
SuSE-7.3
e13ed7cfe9fea868560435c34cba3b56
source rpm:
fd9f91dda0207c62173a71f40bcf4228
SuSE-7.1
354f6776649dc90ab4c58370f036fa3e
source rpm:
2e43d0ad97204214d85f500f445af7f5
SuSE-7.0
7f0020f1443292d6f74740e7c306e50f
source rpm:
adc52fb1be19f8d7f87ac2c1bf425b60
SuSE-6.4
d3e150e0f3bdd04a6ab8b9c47d43f005
source rpm:
d4fc34b96fb2b19929834260d43efef5
______________________________________________________________________________
2) Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:
- We are investigating if recently found weaknesses in resolver libraries
on BSD systems affect the SuSE Linux glibc as well.
- crontab/cron
Paul Starzetz found a small bug in crontab that allows a local user to
read the contents of the (read-protected) file /var/spool/cron/deny due
to an inherited file descriptor from the crontab command that runs the
editor to change the user's crontab. We will fix this problem in future
releases, but due to the minor severity of the bug we don't provide
update packages.
- mozilla
Cross-dependencies between mozilla and other packages in SuSE Linux
products keep us from providing version upgrades for the mozilla
packages. Fixing security bugs in our packages is usually done by
adding the necessary patches to the existing version to ensure the
compatibility and consistency that is expected from our products.
In some cases (as with the mozilla package) the complexity of the
issue does not allow to add patches any more. By consequence,
security related issues in mozilla cannot be addressed.
As a service to our user community, we provide packages of newer
mozilla versions at .
These packages have been verified to run fine; they are not located
in the update directory of the distribution in question because
we cannot make any claims about the compatibility with the other
packages in the product. Security-aware users are encouraged to
install the packages from the projects/ directory.
- ghostscript
Red Hat released a security announcement concerning a problem in
ghostscript, which could be exploited to gain privilege of the print
server user. We are investigating whether SuSE Linux is affected.
- fetchmail
we are in the process of releasing a security update for fetchmail
that corrects a vulnerability that could be exploited by hostile
mail servers.
______________________________________________________________________________
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
References
