______________________________________________________________________________

                        SuSE Security Announcement

        Package:                glibc
        Announcement-ID:        SuSE-SA:2002:031
        Date:                   Friday, Aug 30th 2002 19:00 MEST
        Affected products:      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
                                SuSE Linux Connectivity Server
                                SuSE Linux Office Server
        Vulnerability Type:     local/remote privilege escalation
        Severity (1-10):        6
        SuSE default package:   yes
        Cross References:       CAN-2002-0391, CERT CA-2002-25

    Content of this advisory:
        1) security vulnerability resolved: glibc
           problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
        2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds:
            - ethereal
        3) standard appendix (further information)

______________________________________________________________________________

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

    An integer overflow has been discovered in the xdr_array() function,
    contained in the Sun Microsystems RPC/XDR library, which is part of
    the glibc library package on all SuSE products. This overflow allows
    a remote attacker to overflow a buffer, leading to remote execution of
    arbitrary code supplied by the attacker.

    There is no temporary workaround for this security problem other than
    disabling all RPC based server and client programs. The permanent
    solution is to update the glibc packages with the update packages
    listed below.


    Notes, Special installation instructions:

      * The update packages for the SuSE Linux distributions 7.0 and 7.1
        have not been built yet. The packages for these distributions will
        be published in approximately two weeks (mid September) from now.

      * The names of both the source RPM as well as the binary RPM (sub-)
        packages have changed between different SuSE Linux products.
        Overview:
        dist    | source-RPM | shared libs | static libs,header| profiling
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------
        7.0         libc        shlibs          libc             libd
        all SuSE products after and including SuSE Linux 7.1
                    glibc       glibc           glibc-devel      glibc-profile

        Find out which of the four packages are installed on your system
        according to the package names in the table. Use the command
            rpm -q name_of_package
        to query the package database for each name.
        If you have your package list, download the packages that you need
        from the URLs as listed below. Verify their integrity and authenticity
        following the guidelines as described in section 3) of this security
        announcement.

      * PRECAUTIONS
        The shared libraries package of the glibc is the most sensitive
        part of a running Linux system, and modifications to it should be
        handled with special care. During the update of the shlibs/glibc
        package, runtime-linking the shared libraries is likely to fail for
        processes that execute a new binary with the execve(2) system call.
        Therefore, we recommend to bring a system to single user mode
        ("init S") to perform the package update. If this is not applicable
        for operational reasons, a system receiving the update should be kept
        as quiet as possible (no shell scripts of any kind, no cron jobs, no
        incoming email).

      * After performing the update, you should run the following command
        on your system:
            /sbin/ldconfig
        ldconfig will rebuild the runtime linker cache. If you use YOU
        (Yast2 Online Update), the ldconfig command will be executed
        automatically at the end of the update.

        The shared libraries that were installed on the system before the
        update have been removed from the filesystem, but they are still
        in use by the running applications. Therefore, the diskspace as well
        as the memory will not be freed until the last process that uses
        these files exits. We recommend to reboot the system to workaround
        this problem.



    Listed below you find the URLs for the update packages for the SuSE Linux
    products. We only list the packages that are relevant for the security update.
    Our maintenance customers are being notified individually. The packages
    are being offered to install from the maintenance web.


    Intel i386 Platform:

    SuSE-8.0:
      
      57bb8eb5e4355539f01ee9dc2e1b790e
      
      cf1a18510a8e78914500c10cc9b79bf0
      
      a03333bb8a0bd77def78b633d790fdb2
    source rpm(s):
      
      5ca1e41a5ab22282b0cd0ecc5c286093

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      b6c392faf66f4a3e23f9f8ba70166496
      
      f4616d3ddcaef2847b113f2ac7a86866
      
      a8d5377fc289837c5b9d7902785ea1fe
    source rpm(s):
      
      646af6d0e99f54fd03eb0ec99449df36

    SuSE-7.2:
      
      1408ad17ef2bc543cb9ff42cb2813f99
      
      283d808402eed8f0f4a8ae2b64b91e17
      
      d23a61431b924e5c2e09861463f5489d
    source rpm(s):
      
      9019bbfd6a6952bb154bdcf7cd8d37d3



    Sparc Platform:

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      df6be3f3b427f4ca6cd27b12dbf16fc8
      
      f90e87513d996235cb2711286371dfae
      
      bc659d5181c4d571950821a978fa6ab2
    source rpm(s):
      
      846403d32700d8173e10932517926fc3



    AXP Alpha Platform:

    - no new packages -


    PPC Power PC Platform:

    SuSE-7.3:
      
      2294e4d4777954e7d7c85b6a4e5c8ef7
      
      f68b4b421cd5af4e62a80e9a2c803bd6
      
      0f837c5c1e4bac59e73a0d23b0d88187
    source rpm(s):
      
      fdef49ff7f4ec9546f1e9d8bd46e8fa9



______________________________________________________________________________

2)  Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:

  - ethereal
    Multiple overflows and other security related problems have been found
    in ethereal, a network traffic analyzer program. We have provided update
    packages on our ftp server that upgrade the ethereal package to the
    latest version 0.9.6. A backport of the security fixes to the versions
    supplied in the released SuSE Linux products does not seem feasible.
    We will not release an own announcement for this specific problem.

  - postgresql
    A buffer overflow has been found in the postgresql database management
    system. We are about to prepare update packages for this vulnerability.

  - openldap2
    Andrew McCall reported a problem within the openldap2 package which could
    lead to a denial of service attack against the slapd server. This problem
    has been fixed. New openldap2 packages will soon be available.

______________________________________________________________________________

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>