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

(Oct 10)

It was discovered that ejabberd, a Jabber/XMPP server, uses SSLv2 and weak ciphers for communication, which are considered insecure. The software offers no runtime configuration options to disable these. This update disables the use of SSLv2 and weak ciphers. [More...]
(Oct 10)

Two vulnerabilities were discovered in GnuPG 2, the GNU privacy guard, a free PGP replacement. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Oct 10)

Two vulnerabilities were discovered in GnuPG, the GNU privacy guard, a free PGP replacement. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Oct 10)

Markus Pieton and Vytautas Paulikas discovered that the embedded video and audio player in the TYPO3 web content management system is suspectible to cross-site-scripting. [More...]
(Oct 9)

Hamid Zamani discovered multiple security problems (buffer overflows, format string vulnerabilities and missing input sanitising), which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. [More...]
(Oct 9)

John Fitzpatrick of MWR InfoSecurity discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability in torque, a PBS-derived batch processing queueing system. The torque authentication model revolves around the use of privileged [More...]
(Oct 8)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the FreeBSD kernel that may lead to a denial of service or privilege escalation. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]
(Oct 4)

A heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability was found in icedtea-web, a web browser plugin for running applets written in the Java programming language. If a user were tricked into opening a malicious website, an attacker could cause the plugin to crash or possibly execute arbitrary [More...]
(Oct 10)

A vulnerability in Setuptools could allow remote attackers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks.
(Oct 10)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Quagga, the worst of which could lead to arbitrary code execution.
(Oct 10)

Multiple vulnerabilities in OpenJPEG could result in execution of arbitrary code.
(Oct 7)

A buffer overflow vulnerability in Aircrack-ng could result in execution of arbitrary code or Denial of Service.
(Oct 6)

A vulnerability in GEGL might allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.
(Oct 6)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in nginx, the worst of which may allow execution of arbitrary code.
(Oct 6)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Poppler, some of which may allow execution of arbitrary code.
(Oct 5)

A vulnerability in isync could allow remote attackers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks.
(Oct 4)

The Module-Signature module for Perl has insufficient path checks, allowing a remote attacker to execute arbitrary Perl code.
Mandriva: 2013:249: libraw (Oct 10)

Updated libraw packages fix security vulnerabilities: It was discovered that LibRaw incorrectly handled photo files. If a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted photo file, applications linked against LibRaw could be made to [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:248: xinetd (Oct 10)

Updated xinetd package fixes security vulnerability: It was found that xinetd ignored the user and group configuration directives for services running under the tcpmux-server service. This flaw could cause the associated services to run as root. If there was [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:247: gnupg (Oct 10)

Multiple vulnerabilities has been discovered and corrected in gnupg: GnuPG 1.4.x, 2.0.x, and 2.1.x treats a key flags subpacket with all bits cleared (no usage permitted) as if it has all bits set (all usage permitted), which might allow remote attackers to bypass [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:246: openjpa (Oct 7)

Updated openjpa packages fix security vulnerability: The BrokerFactory functionality in Apache OpenJPA before 2.2.2 creates local executable JSP files containing logging trace data produced during deserialization of certain crafted OpenJPA objects, [More...]
Mandriva: 2013:245: proftpd (Oct 3)

A vulnerability has been discovered and corrected in proftpd: Integer overflow in kbdint.c in mod_sftp in ProFTPD 1.3.4d and 1.3.5r3 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a large response count value in an authentication [More...]
Red Hat: 2013:1418-01: libtar: Moderate Advisory (Oct 10)

An updated libtar package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Red Hat: 2013:1411-01: glibc: Moderate Advisory (Oct 8)

Updated glibc packages that fix one security issue 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: 2013:1409-01: xinetd: Moderate Advisory (Oct 7)

An updated xinetd package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Ubuntu: 1988-1: Cyrus SASL vulnerability (Oct 9)

Cyrus SASL could be made to crash if it processed specially crafted input.
Ubuntu: 1987-1: GnuPG vulnerabilities (Oct 9)

Several security issues were fixed in GnuPG.