Thank you for reading the Linux Advisory Watch Security Newsletter. The purpose of this document is to provide our readers with a quick summary of each week's vendor security bulletins and pointers on methods to improve the security posture of your open source system. Vulnerabilities affect nearly every vendor virtually every week, so be sure to read through to find the updates your distributor have made available.

LinuxSecurity.com Feature Extras:

Password guessing as an attack vector - Using password guessing as an attack vector. Over the years we've been taught a strong password must be long and complex to be considered secure. Some of us have taken that notion to heart and always ensure our passwords are strong. But some don't give a second thought to the complexity or length of our password.

Squid and Digest Authentication - Digest AuthenticationDigest Authentication hashes the password before transmitting over the wire. Essentially it sends a message digest generated from multiple items including username, realm and nonce value. If you want to know more see (RFC 2617).

(Dec 25)

It was discovered that the Kerberos support for telnetd contains a pre-authentication buffer overflow, which may enable remote attackers who can connect to the Telnet to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. [More...]
(Dec 25)

It was discovered that the Kerberos support for telnetd contains a pre-authentication buffer overflow, which may enable remote attackers who can connect to the Telnet to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. [More...]
(Dec 24)

Two buffer overflows were discovered in JasPer, a library for handling JPEG-2000 images, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. For the oldstable distribution (lenny), this problem will be fixed in [More...]
(Dec 22)

It was discovered that Unbound, a recursive DNS resolver, would crash when processing certain malformed DNS responses from authoritative DNS servers, leading to denial of service. [More...]
(Dec 21)

It was discovered that libsoup2.4, a HTTP library implementation in C, is not properly validating input when processing requests made to SoupServer. A remote attacker can exploit this flaw to access system files via a directory traversal attack. [More...]
(Dec 20)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in lighttpd, a small and fast webserver with minimal memory footprint. CVE-2011-4362 [More...]
(Dec 20)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in lighttpd, a small and fast webserver with minimal memory footprint. CVE-2011-4362 [More...]
(Dec 19)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in Asterisk, an Open Source PBX and telephony toolkit: CVE-2011-4597 [More...]
(Dec 19)

Several problems have been discovered in mediawiki, a website engine for collaborative work. CVE-2011-1578 CVE-2011-1587 [More...]
(Dec 18)

Ansgar Burchardt, Mike O'Connor and Philipp Kern discovered multiple vulnerabilities in DTC, a web control panel for admin and accounting hosting services: [More...]
(Dec 18)

The Debian X wrapper enforces that the X server can only be started from a console. "vladz" discovered that this wrapper could be bypassed. The oldstable distribution (lenny) is not affected. [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:192: mozilla (Dec 23)

Security issues were identified and fixed in mozilla firefox and thunderbird: The SVG implementation in Mozilla Firefox 8.0, Thunderbird 8.0, and SeaMonkey 2.5 does not properly interact with DOMAttrModified event [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:180: php-suhosin (Dec 19)

A vulnerability was discovered and fixed in php-suhosin: crypt_blowfish before 1.1, as used in suhosin does not properly handle 8-bit characters, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to determine a cleartext password by leveraging knowledge [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:190: libarchive (Dec 19)

Two heap-based buffer overflow flaws were discovered in libarchive. If a user were tricked into expanding a specially-crafted ISO 9660 CD-ROM image or tar archive with an application using libarchive, it could cause the application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:191: libarchive (Dec 19)

A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was discovered in libarchive. If a user were tricked into expanding a specially-crafted ISO 9660 CD-ROM image or tar archive with an application using libarchive, it could cause the application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1849-01: kernel: Important Advisory (Dec 22)

Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue and various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1845-01: tomcat5: Moderate Advisory (Dec 20)

Updated tomcat5 packages that fix multiple security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1834-01: libXfont: Important Advisory (Dec 19)

Updated libXfont packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Extended Update Support. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Ubuntu: 1254-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities (Dec 22)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been fixed in Thunderbird.
Ubuntu: 1316-1: t1lib vulnerability (Dec 21)

t1lib could be made to crash or run programs as your login if it opened aspecially crafted font file.
Ubuntu: 1315-1: JasPer vulnerabilities (Dec 20)

JasPer could be made to crash or run programs as your login if it opened aspecially crafted file.
Ubuntu: 1313-1: Linux Kernel (Oneiric backport) vulnerability (Dec 19)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1312-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities (Dec 19)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.