Debian: DSA 405-1 Critical: Rsync Heap Overflow Remote Threat

Package : rsync
Vulnerability : heap overflow
Problem-Type : remote
Debian-specific: no
CVE ID : CAN-2003-0962

The rsync team has received evidence that a vulnerability in all
versions of rsync prior to 2.5.7, a fast remote file copy program, was
recently used in combination with a Linux kernel vulnerability to
compromise the security of a public rsync server.

While this heap overflow vulnerability could not be used by itself to
obtain root access on an rsync server, it could be used in combination
with the recently announced do_brk() vulnerability in the Linux kernel
to produce a full remote compromise.

Please note that this vulnerability only affects the use of rsync as
an "rsync server". To see if you are running a rsync server you
should use the command "netstat -a -n" to see if you are listening on
TCP port 873. If you are not listening on TCP port 873 then you are
not running an rsync server.

For the stable distribution (woody) this problem has been fixed in
version 2.5.5-0.2.

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