This week, advisories were released for thunderbird, cgiirc, tiff, rsync, firefox, nagios, xorg-x11, cpio, gzip, gdm, mysql, xine, libtiff, ruby, php, and cyrus. The distributors include Debain, Gentoo, Mandriva, Red Hat, and SuSE.

EnGarde Secure Linux: Why not give it a try?

EnGarde Secure Linux is a Linux server distribution that is geared toward providing a open source platform that is highly secure by default as well as easy to administer. EnGarde Secure Linux includes a select group of open source packages configured to provide maximum security for tasks such as serving dynamic websites, high availability mail transport, network intrusion detection, and more. The Community edition of EnGarde Secure Linux is completely free and open source, and online security and application updates are also freely available with GDSN registration.

Guardian Digital Makes Email Safe For Business - Microsoft 365, Goo....

OSSEC HIDS v0.8 Available

OSSEC HIDS is an Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System. It performs log analysis, integrity checking, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response. It runs on most operating systems, including Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Windows. This is the first version offering native support for Windows (XP/2000/2003). It includes as well a new set of log analysis rules for sendmail, web logs (Apache and IIS), IDSs and Windows authentication events.

The correlation rules for squid, mail logs, firewall events and authentication systems have been improved, now detecting scans, worms and internal attacks.The active-responses were also refined, with support to IPFW (FreeBSD) added.

The installation process was re-organized, now including simpler configuration options and translation to 6 different languages (English, Portuguese, German, Turkish, Polish and Italian).

To download the Unix and Windows versions:

More information:

Use our mailling list if you have questions or comments:

LinuxSecurity.com Feature Extras:

EnGarde Secure Linux v3.0.6 Now Available - Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.6 (Version 3.0, Release 6). This release includes several bug fixes and feature enhancements to the Guardian Digital WebTool and the SELinux policy, several updated packages, and a couple of new packages available for installation.

Linux File & Directory Permissions Mistakes - One common mistake Linux administrators make is having file and directory permissions that are far too liberal and allow access beyond that which is needed for proper system operations. A full explanation of unix file permissions is beyond the scope of this article, so I'll assume you are familiar with the usage of such tools as chmod, chown, and chgrp. If you'd like a refresher, one is available right here on linuxsecurity.com.

Take advantage of our Linux Security discussion list! This mailing list is for general security-related questions and comments. To subscribe send an e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with "subscribe" as the subject.

Thank you for reading the LinuxSecurity.com weekly security newsletter. The purpose of this document is to provide our readers with a quick summary of each week's most relevant Linux security headline.

Debian
Debian: New Mozilla Thunderbird packages fix several vulnerabilities
4th, May, 2006

Updated package.

advisories/debian/debian-new-mozilla-thunderbird-packages-fix-several-vulnerabilities-8356
Debian: New cgiirc packages fix arbitrary code execution
8th, May, 2006

Updated package.

advisories/debian/debian-new-cgiirc-packages-fix-arbitrary-code-execution
Debian: New Mozilla packages fix arbitrary code execution
9th, May, 2006

Updated package.

advisories/debian/debian-new-mozilla-packages-fix-arbitrary-code-execution
Debian: New TIFF packages fix denial of service and arbitrary code execution
9th, May, 2006

Updated package.

advisories/debian/debian-new-tiff-packages-fix-denial-of-service-and-arbitrary-code-execution
Debian: New Mozilla Firefox packages fix arbitrary code execution
11th, May, 2006

Updated package.

advisories/debian/debian-new-mozilla-firefox-packages-fix-arbitrary-code-execution
Gentoo
Gentoo: rsync Potential integer overflow
6th, May, 2006

An attacker having write access to an rsync module might be able to execute arbitrary code on an rsync server.

Gentoo: Mozilla Firefox Potential remote code execution
6th, May, 2006

The Mozilla Firefox 1.5 line is vulnerable to a buffer overflow in the JavaScript extension which may in theory lead to remote execution of arbitrary code.

Gentoo: Nagios Buffer overflow
7th, May, 2006

Nagios is vulnerable to a buffer overflow which may lead to remote execution of arbitrary code.

Mandriva
Mandriva: Updated xorg-x11 packages fix vulnerability
5th, May, 2006

A problem was discovered in xorg-x11 where the X render extension would mis-calculate the size of a buffer, leading to an overflow that could possibly be exploited by clients of the X server.

Mandriva: Updated cpio package fixes symlink bug in passthrough mode
9th, May, 2006

When using cpio in passthrough mode (i.e.: find dira|cpio -pdmv dirb) symbolic links are replaced with the actual files or directories they point to. Updated packages have been rebuilt with the correct CPPFLAGS to correct this issue.

Mandriva: Updated gzip packages fix bug with zgrep passing options to grep
9th, May, 2006

The zgrep wrapper script does not correctly pass all available options that grep accepts to the grep binary. Updated packages have been patched to correct this issue.

Mandriva: Updated gdm package fixes symlink attack vulnerability
10th, May, 2006

A race condition in daemon/slave.c in gdm before 2.14.1 allows local users to gain privileges via a symlink attack when gdm performs chown and chgrp operations on the .ICEauthority file. Packages have been patched to correct this issue.

Mandriva: Updated MySQL packages fix several vulnerabilities
10th, May, 2006

The check_connection function in sql_parse.cc in MySQL 4.0.x up to 4.0.26, 4.1.x up to 4.1.18, and 5.0.x up to 5.0.20 allows remote attackers to read portions of memory via a username without a trailing null byte, which causes a buffer over-read. (CVE-2006-1516) sql_parse.cc in MySQL 4.0.x up to 4.0.26, 4.1.x up to 4.1.18, and 5.0.x up to 5.0.20 allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information via a COM_TABLE_DUMP request with an incorrect packet length, which includes portions of memory in an error message. (CVE-2006-1517) Updated packages have been patched to correct these issues.

Mandriva: Updated xine-ui packages fix format string vulnerabilities
10th, May, 2006

Multiple format string vulnerabilities in xiTK (xitk/main.c) in xine allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via format string specifiers in a long filename on an EXTINFO line in a playlist file. Packages have been patched to correct this issue.

Red Hat
RedHat: Important: xorg-x11 security update
4th, May, 2006

Updated X.org packages that fix a security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-xorg-x11-security-update-6165
RedHat: Important: libtiff security update
9th, May, 2006

Updated libtiff packages that fix several security flaws are now availabl for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-libtiff-security-update-70283
RedHat: Moderate: ruby security update
9th, May, 2006

Updated ruby packages that fix a denial of service issue are now available. This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

advisories/red-hat/redhat-moderate-ruby-security-update-81302
SuSE
SuSE: php4,php5 various security problems
5th, May, 2006

This update fixes the following security issues in the scripting languages PHP4 and PHP5:

- copy() and tempnam() functions could bypass open_basedir restrictions (CVE-2006-1494)
- Cross-Site-Scripting (XSS) bug in phpinfo() (CVE-2006-0996)
- mb_send_mail() lacked safe_mode checks (CVE-2006-1014, CVE-2006-1015)
- html_entity_decode() could expose memory content (CVE-2006-1490)
SuSE: cyrus-sasl-digestmd5 denial of
5th, May, 2006

If a server or client is using DIGEST-MD5 authentication via the cyrus-sasl libraries it is possible to cause a denial of service attack against the other side (client or server) by leaving out the "realm=" header in the authentication. This is tracked by the Mitre CVE ID CVE-2006-1721.