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:

Securing a Linux Web Server - With the significant prevalence of Linux web servers globally, security is often touted as a strength of the platform for such a purpose. However, a Linux based web server is only as secure as its configuration and very often many are quite vulnerable to compromise. While specific configurations vary wildly due to environments or specific use, there are various general steps that can be taken to insure basic security considerations are in place.

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

(Aug 29)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service, information leak or privilege escalation. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Aug 27)

Pedro Ribeiro and Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala discovered multiple vulnerabilities in various tools shipped by the tiff library. Processing a malformed file may lead to denial of service or the execution of arbitrary code. [More...]
(Aug 27)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the FreeBSD kernel that may lead to a privilege escalation or information leak. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Aug 26)

It was discovered that PHP, a general-purpose scripting language commonly used for web application development, did not properly process embedded NUL characters in the subjectAltName extension of X.509 certificates. Depending on the application and with [More...]
(Aug 25)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Chromium web browser. CVE-2013-2887 [More...]
(Aug 23)

Nick Brunn reported a possible cross-site scripting vulnerability in python-django, a high-level Python web development framework. The is_safe_url utility function used to validate that a used URL is on [More...]
(Aug 29)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in MySQL, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause Denial of Service.
(Aug 28)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Wireshark, allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause Denial of Service.
(Aug 23)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Puppet, the worst of which could lead to execution of arbitrary code.
(Aug 22)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Adobe Reader, including potential remote execution of arbitrary code and local privilege escalation.
(Aug 22)

A vulnerability has been found in D-Bus which allows a local user to cause a Denial of Service.
Mandriva: 2013:222: puppet (Aug 27)

Updated puppet and puppet3 package fix security vulnerabilities: It was discovered that Puppet incorrectly handled the resource_type service. A local attacker on the master could use this issue to execute arbitrary Ruby files (CVE-2013-4761). [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:221: php (Aug 27)

A vulnerability has been discovered and corrected in php: The openssl_x509_parse function in openssl.c in the OpenSSL module in PHP before 5.4.18 and 5.5.x before 5.5.2 does not properly handle a '\0' character in a domain name in the Subject Alternative Name field [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:220: lcms (Aug 27)

Updated lcms packages fix security vulnerability: Three buffer overflows in Little CMS version 1.19 that could possibly be exploited through user input (CVE-2013-4276). [More...] _______________________________________________________________________
Mandriva: 2013:219: libtiff (Aug 23)

Updated libtiff packages fix security vulnerabilities: Pedro Ribeiro discovered a buffer overflow flaw in rgb2ycbcr, a tool to convert RGB color, greyscale, or bi-level TIFF images to YCbCr images, and multiple buffer overflow flaws in gif2tiff, a tool to convert GIF [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:218: python-django (Aug 23)

Updated python-django package fixes security vulnerability: The is_safe_url() function has been modified to properly recognize and reject URLs which specify a scheme other than HTTP or HTTPS, to prevent cross-site scripting attacks through redirecting to other [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:217: spice (Aug 23)

Updated spice packages fix security vulnerability: An user able to initiate spice connection to the guest could use a flaw in server/red_channel.c to crash the guest (CVE-2013-4130). [More...] _______________________________________________________________________
Mandriva: 2013:216: perl-Proc-ProcessTable (Aug 23)

Updated perl-Proc-ProcessTable package fixes security vulnerability: ProcessTable.pm in the Proc::ProcessTable module 0.45 for Perl, when TTY information caching is enabled, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on /tmp/TTYDEVS (CVE-2011-4363). [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:215: cacti (Aug 22)

SQL injection and shell escaping issues were discovered and fixed in cacti (CVE-2013-1434, CVE-2013-1435). The updated packages have been upgraded to the 0.8.8b version which is not vulnerable to these issues. [More...]
Red Hat: 2013:1182-01: 389-ds-base: Important Advisory (Aug 28)

Updated 389-ds-base packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Red Hat: 2013:1173-01: kernel: Important Advisory (Aug 27)

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]