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.

(May 9)

It was discovered that Apache POI, a Java implementation of the Microsoft Office file formats, would allocate arbitrary amounts of memory when processing crafted documents. This could impact the stability of the Java virtual machine. [More...]
Debian: 2422-2: file: regression fix (May 9)

A regression was discovered in the security update for file, which lead to false positives on the CDF format. This update fixes that regression. For reference the original advisory text follows. [More...]
(May 9)

It was discovered that Mahara, the portfolio, weblog, and resume builder, had an insecure default with regards to SAML-based authentication used with more than one SAML identity provider. Someone with control over one IdP could impersonate users from other IdP's. [More...]
(May 9)

Sergey Nartimov discovered that in Rails, a Ruby based framework for web development, when developers generate html options tags manually, user input concatenated with manually built tags may not be escaped and an attacker can inject arbitrary HTML into the document. [More...]
(May 9)

De Eindbazen discovered that PHP, when run with mod_cgi, will interpret a query string as command line parameters, allowing to execute arbitrary code. [More...]
(May 8)

Security Report Summary
(May 4)

The recent quagga update, DSA-2459-1, introduced a memory leak in the bgpd process in some configurations. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(May 3)

The initial update introduced a regression, which could lead to errors when processing some JPEG files. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(May 3)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in Icedove, an unbranded version of the Thunderbird mail/news client. CVE-2012-0467 [More...]
(May 2)

Ivano Cristofolini discovered that insufficient security checks in Samba's handling of LSA RPC calls could lead to privilege escalation by gaining the "take ownership" privilege. [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:071: php (May 10)

This is a bugfix and security advisory that upgrades php to the latest 5.3.13 version for Mandriva Linux Enterprise 5.2 which resolves numerous upstream bugs in php. Please refer to the following Mandriva advisories for further information: MDVA-2012:004, MDVSA-2011:165, MDVSA-2011:166, MDVSA-2011:180, [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:068-1: php (May 10)

A vulnerability has been found and corrected in php(-cgi): PHP-CGI-based setups contain a vulnerability when parsing query string parameters from php files. A remote unauthenticated attacker could obtain sensitive information, cause a denial of service condition or [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:070: samba (May 4)

A vulnerability has been found and corrected in samba: A file existence dislosure flaw was found in the way mount.cifs tool of the Samba SMB/CIFS tools suite performed mount of a Linux CIFS (Common Internet File System) filesystem. A local user, able to [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:069: cifs-utils (May 4)

A vulnerability has been found and corrected in cifs-utils: A file existence dislosure flaw was found in the way mount.cifs tool of the Samba SMB/CIFS tools suite performed mount of a Linux CIFS (Common Internet File System) filesystem. A local user, able to [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0544-01: ImageMagick: Moderate Advisory (May 7)

Updated ImageMagick packages that fix multiple security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0546-01: php: Critical Advisory (May 7)

Updated php packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:0545-01: ImageMagick: Moderate Advisory (May 7)

Updated ImageMagick packages that fix three security issues and one bug 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: 2012:0547-01: php53: Critical Advisory (May 7)

Updated php53 packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical [More...]
Ubuntu: 1440-1: Linux kernel (Natty backport) vulnerabilities (May 8)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1432-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities (May 8)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1439-1: Horizon vulnerabilities (May 7)

Horizon could be made to expose sensitive information over the network.
Ubuntu: 1437-1: PHP vulnerability (May 4)

Standalone PHP CGI scripts could be made to execute arbitrary code withthe privilege of the web server.
Ubuntu: 1430-3: Thunderbird vulnerabilities (May 4)

Several security issues were fixed in Thunderbird.
Ubuntu: 1438-1: Nova vulnerability (May 3)

Nova could be made to crash the system under certain conditions.