Debian 3.0 DSA-134-1 Critical: OpenSSH Remote Access Exploit

Package : ssh
Problem type : remote exploit
Debian-specific: no

Theo de Raadt announced that the OpenBSD team is working with ISS
on a remote exploit for OpenSSH (a free implementation of the
Secure SHell protocol). They are refusing to provide any details on
the vulnerability but instead are advising everyone to upgrade to
the latest release, version 3.3.

This version was released 3 days ago and introduced a new feature
to reduce the effect of exploits in the network handling code
called privilege separation. Unfortunately this release has a few
known problems: compression does not work on all operating systems
since the code relies on specific mmap features, and the PAM
support has not been completed. There may be other problems as
well.

The new privilege separation support from Niels Provos changes ssh
to use a separate non-privileged process to handle most of the
work. This means any vulnerability in this part of OpenSSH can
never lead to a root compromise but only to access to a separate
...