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.

(Oct 26)

It was discovered that Exim, a mail transport agent, is not properly handling the decoding of DNS records for DKIM. Specifically, crafted records can yield to a heap-based buffer overflow. An attacker can exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code. [More...]
(Oct 23)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Iceweasel, Debian's version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Oct 23)

gpernot discovered that Tinyproxy, a HTTP proxy, is vulnerable to a denial of service by remote attackers by sending crafted request headers. [More...]
(Oct 23)

Several vulnerabilities were found in ViewVC, a web interface for CVS and Subversion repositories. CVE-2009-5024: remote attackers can bypass the cvsdb row_limit [More...]
(Oct 23)

cups-pk-helper, a PolicyKit helper to configure cups with fine-grained privileges, wraps CUPS function calls in an insecure way. This could lead to uploading sensitive data to a cups resource, or overwriting specific files with the content of a cups resource. The user would have [More...]
(Oct 21)

It was discovered that a buffer overflow in libtiff's parsing of files using PixarLog compression could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. [More...]
(Oct 20)

It was discovered that BIND, a DNS server, hangs while constructing the additional section of a DNS reply, when certain combinations of resource records are present. This vulnerability affects both recursive and authoritative servers. [More...]
(Oct 21)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in Chromium, some of which may allow execution of arbitrary code.
(Oct 19)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Libav, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause Denial of Service.
(Oct 19)

Two vulnerabilities have been found in Bash, the worst of which may allow execution of arbitrary code.
(Oct 18)

A vulnerability which allows a remote attacking server to read or overwrite arbitrary files has been found in rdesktop.
(Oct 18)

Multiple vulnerabilities were found in qemu-kvm, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code.
(Oct 18)

An error in the hostname matching of w3m might enable remote attackers to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks.
(Oct 18)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in MoinMoin, the worst of which allowing for injection of arbitrary web script or HTML.
Mandriva: 2012:168: hostapd (Oct 22)

Multiple vulnerabilities has been discovered and corrected in hostapd: hostapd 0.7.3, and possibly other versions before 1.0, uses 0644 permissions for /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, which might allow local users to obtain sensitive information such as credentials [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:1391-01: java-1.7.0-oracle: Critical Advisory (Oct 18)

Updated java-1.7.0-oracle packages that fix several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Supplementary. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical [More...]
Red Hat: 2012:1392-01: java-1.6.0-sun: Critical Advisory (Oct 18)

Updated java-1.6.0-sun packages that fix several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 Supplementary. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical [More...]
Ubuntu: 1618-1: Exim vulnerability (Oct 26)

Exim could be made to run programs if it received specially crafted networktraffic.
Ubuntu: 1617-1: WebKit vulnerabilities (Oct 25)

Multiple security vulnerabilities were fixed in WebKit.
Ubuntu: 1616-1: Python 3.1 vulnerabilities (Oct 24)

Several security issues were fixed in Python 3.1.
Ubuntu: 1615-1: Python 3.2 vulnerabilities (Oct 23)

Several security issues were fixed in Python 3.2.
Ubuntu: 1614-1: Ruby vulnerabilities (Oct 22)

Several security issues were fixed in Ruby.
Ubuntu: 1603-2: Ruby vulnerabilities (Oct 22)

Ruby could allow excessive access in untrusted programs.