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 with Medusa 2.0 - Medusa was created by the fine folks at foofus.net, in fact the much awaited Medusa 2.0 update was released in February of 2010. For a complete change log please visit

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.

(Apr 19)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in OpenSSL. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following issues: CVE-2012-0884 [More...]
(Apr 18)

It was discovered that the last security update for gajim, DSA-2453-1, introduced a regression in certain environments. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(Apr 16)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in gajim, a feature-rich jabber client. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Apr 15)

Niels Heinen noticed a security issue with the default Apache configuration on Debian if certain scripting modules like mod_php or mod_rivet are installed. The problem arises because the directory /usr/share/doc, which is mapped to the URL /doc, may contain example [More...]
(Apr 13)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in puppet, a centralized configuration management system. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Apr 12)

It was discovered that Samba, the SMB/CIFS file, print, and login server, contained a flaw in the remote procedure call (RPC) code which allowed remote code execution as the super user from an unauthenticated connection. [More...]
(Apr 12)

It was discovered that sqlalchemy, an SQL toolkit and object relational mapper for python, is not sanitizing input passed to the limit/offset keywords to select() as well as the value passed to select.limit()/offset(). This allows an attacker to perform SQL injection attacks against [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:060: openssl (Apr 19)

A potentially exploitable vulnerability has been discovered in the OpenSSL function asn1_d2i_read_bio that affects S/MIME or CMS applications using the built in MIME parser SMIME_read_PKCS7 or SMIME_read_CMS (CVE-2012-2110). [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:032-1: mozilla (Apr 17)

Security issues were identified and fixed in mozilla firefox and thunderbird: Security researchers Blair Strang and Scott Bell of Security Assessment found that when a parent window spawns and closes a child window that [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:059: python-sqlalchemy (Apr 16)

It was discovered that SQLAlchemy did not sanitize values for the limit and offset keywords for SQL select statements. If an application using SQLAlchemy accepted values for these keywords, and did not filter or sanitize them before passing them to SQLAlchemy, it could allow an attacker to perform an SQL injection attack against the application [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:058: curl (Apr 13)

Multiple vulnerabilities has been found and corrected in curl: curl is vulnerable to a SSL CBC IV vulnerability when built to use OpenSSL for the SSL/TLS layer. A work-around has been added to mitigate the problem (CVE-2011-3389). [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:057: freetype2 (Apr 12)

Multiple flaws were found in FreeType. Specially crafted files could cause application crashes or potentially execute arbitrary code (CVE-2012-1126, CVE-2012-1127, CVE-2012-1128, CVE-2012-1129, CVE-2012-1130, CVE-2012-1131, CVE-2012-1132, CVE-2012-1133, CVE-2012-1134, CVE-2012-1135, CVE-2012-1136, CVE-2012-1137, [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:056: rpm (Apr 12)

Multiple flaws were found in the way RPM parsed package file headers. An attacker could create a specially-crafted RPM package that, when its package header was accessed, or during package signature verification, could cause an application using the RPM library to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code (CVE-2012-0060, [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0480-01: kernel: Important Advisory (Apr 17)

Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue, various bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0481-01: kernel: Moderate Advisory (Apr 17)

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0478-01: samba: Critical Advisory (Apr 13)

Updated samba packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Extended Life Cycle Support. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical [More...]
Ubuntu: 1400-5: GSettings desktop schemas regression (Apr 20)

Firefox's ability to use system proxy settings regressed.
Ubuntu: 1423-1: Samba vulnerability (Apr 12)

Samba could be made to run programs as the administrator if it receivedspecially crafted network traffic.
Ubuntu: 1422-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities (Apr 12)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1421-1: Linux kernel (Maverick backport) vulnerabilities (Apr 12)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.