Advisories
Mandriva Advisories
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| Problem Description |
All 2.3.x versions of modutils (since March 12 1999) contain a vulnerability that can lead to a local root compromise. The modprobe program uses popen() to execute the "echo" program argumented with user input. Because popen() relies on /bin/sh to parse the command string and execute "echo", un-escaped shell meta-characters can be included in user input to execute commands. Although modprobe is not installed setuid root, this vulnerability can be exploited to gain root access provided the target system is using kmod. Kmod is a kernel facility that automatically executes the program modprobe when a module is requested via request_module(). One program that can take advantage of this vulnerability is ping. When a device is specified at the command line that doesn't exist, request_module is called with the user-supplied arguments passed to the kernel. The kernel then takes the arguments and executes modprobe with them. Arbitrary commands included in the argument for module name (device name to ping) are then executed when popen() is called as root.
A new version of modutils (2.3.20) has been released that fixes this particular vulnerability. modutils still supports meta expansion, including back quoted commands, but only for data read from the configuration file. This assumes that when modutils is run as root out of the kernel, normal users cannot specify their own configuration files.
Update:
The previous version of modutils (2.3.20) contained an error in the new safe guards that caused them to not properly be enabled when run as root from the kmod process. These new safe guards check the arguments passed to modules. The 2.3.21 modutils package fixes this error and correctly checks the arguments when running from kmod, limiting kernel module arguments to those specified in /etc/conf.modules (Linux-Mandrake 7.1) or /etc/modules.conf (Linux-Mandrake 7.2).
| Updated Packages |
Mandrakelinux 7.1
f037682a4339be923b9a6299198b83af 7.1/RPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.4mdk.i586.rpm 93e6342933861a8be5f84c8823f3ff9c 7.1/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.4mdk.src.rpm
Mandrakelinux 7.2
7b647e5f9fc2110407fc6e89a3d64548 7.2/RPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.3mdk.i586.rpm 264421bfa296e484ba2bee270584661b 7.2/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.3mdk.src.rpm
| Upgrade |
To upgrade automatically, use MandrakeUpdate.
| Verification |
Please verify the update prior to upgrading to ensure the integrity of the downloaded package. You can do this with the command :
rpm --checksig package.rpm
You can get the GPG public key of the Mandriva Security Team to verify the GPG signature of each RPM.
If you use MandrakeUpdate, the verification of md5 checksum and GPG signature is performed automatically for you.