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.

(Dec 30)

Thorsten Glaser discovered that the RSSReader extension for mediawiki, a website engine for collaborative work, does not properly escape tags in feeds. This could allow a malicious feed to inject JavaScript into the mediawiki pages. [More...]
(Dec 30)

Marc Schoenefeld discovered that an integer overflow in the ICC parsing code of Ghostscript can lead to the execution of arbitrary code. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(Dec 30)

"halfdog" discovered that incorrect interrupt handling in Virtualbox, a x86 virtualization solution - can lead to denial of service. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(Dec 29)

It was discovered that missing input validation in the twikidraw and anywikidraw actions can result in the execution of arbitrary code. This security issue in being actively exploited. [More...]
(Dec 27)

Marko Myllynen discovered that elinks, a powerful text-mode browser, incorrectly delegates user credentials during GSS-Negotiate. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
(Dec 27)

Multiple security issues have been found in Mahara - an electronic portfolio, weblog, and resume builder -, which can result in cross-site scripting, clickjacking or arbitrary file execution. [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:001: gnupg (Jan 2)

A vulnerability has been found and corrected in gnupg: Versions of GnuPG <= 1.4.12 are vulnerable to memory access violations and public keyring database corruption when importing public keys that have been manipulated. An OpenPGP key can be fuzzed in such a [More...]
Mandriva: 2012:184: libtiff (Dec 27)

A vulnerability was found and corrected in libtiff: A stack-based buffer overflow was found in the way libtiff handled DOTRANGE tags. An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially-crafted TIFF file that, when opened, would cause an [More...]
Ubuntu: 1680-1: MoinMoin vulnerabilities (Dec 29)

MoinMoin could be made to run programs and overwrite files.