From sup-info@LOCUTUS4.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM Tue Jan 23 18:06:26 2001 From: Caldera Support Info To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 10:39:36 -0700 Subject: [BUGTRAQ] Security Update: CSSA-2001-005.0 password sniffing in kdesu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 ______________________________________________________________________________ Caldera Systems, Inc. Security Advisory Subject: password sniffing in kdesu Advisory number: CSSA-2001-005.0 Issue date: 2001 January, 23 Cross reference: ______________________________________________________________________________ 1. Problem Description KDE2 comes with a program called kdesu that is used to run certain administration commands under the account of the super user (for instance, every time the KDE control center asks you for the root password, you actually talk to kdesu). There is a bug in kdesu that allows any user on the system to steal the passwords you enter at the kdesu prompt. 2. Vulnerable Versions System Package ----------------------------------------------------------- OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 All packages previous to kdebase2-2.0-6 and kdelibs2-2.0-6 Note that you are not vulnerable if you didn't install the KDE2 update. 3. Solution Workaround: There is no real workaround for this bug, and the following is _not_ a permanent solution to the problem; this is merely a temporary solution until you have installed the update. As the super user, create directories in /tmp that have the same name as the socket used by kdesu: mkdir /tmp/kdesud_UID_0 where UID ranges over all user IDs of users on your system. Note that the trailing 0 is the display number, so if you run several X servers on your machine, you need to repeat the process for display 1, 2, etc. In order to protect just yourself, the following will do the trick: mkdir /tmp/kdesud_`id -u`_0 The proper solution is to upgrade to the fixed packages. 4. OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 5.1 Location of Fixed Packages The upgrade packages can be found on Caldera's FTP site at: ftp://ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/updates/eDesktop/2.4/current/RPMS/ The corresponding source code package can be found at: ftp://ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/updates/eDesktop/2.4/current/SRPMS 5.2 Verification 23a677755332e24db259ebce9a754e14 SRPMS/kdebase2-2.0-6.src.rpm 083b8ddaf4f67d2d0b4146245034229b RPMS/kdebase2-2.0-6.i386.rpm b759a751da20a2d6c6c296da94e1656e RPMS/kdebase2-opengl-2.0-6.i386.rpm 7970d51bc04e4e23e03b01f001f56780 SRPMS/kdelibs2-2.0-6.src.rpm 20aa5f2327d8978700c22c8afce9df34 RPMS/kdelibs2-2.0-6.i386.rpm cfd8744b1950a9c5f5cf4ecd7adc0f3b RPMS/kdelibs2-devel-2.0-6.i386.rpm c922e03e8f1024a134d2542e61afca22 RPMS/kdelibs2-devel-static-2.0-6.i386.rpm d394c163bda790719881fc0defc3dca9 RPMS/kdelibs2-doc-2.0-6.i386.rpm 5.3 Installing Fixed Packages Upgrade the affected packages with the following commands: rpm -Fhv kde*2.0-6.i386.rpm 5. References This and other Caldera security resources are located at: http://www.calderasystems.com/support/security/index.html This security fix closes Caldera's internal Problem Report 8718. 6. Disclaimer Caldera Systems, Inc. is not responsible for the misuse of any of the information we provide on this website and/or through our security advisories. Our advisories are a service to our customers intended to promote secure installation and use of Caldera OpenLinux. 7. Acknowledgements Caldera Systems, Inc. wishes to thank Sebastian Krahmer (SuSE) and Waldo Bastian (KDE) for their assistance. ______________________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE6bWEY18sy83A/qfwRAt0AAKC1eQpXRqVC2d4crHFEXaYuO08EDACfek/L XOoqPc1KETiu0+vLLy5XelU= =UqjX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----