Critical Advisory on Fedora: XFree86 Privilege Escalation Issue

XFree86 is an open source implementation of the X Window System. It

provides the basic low level functionality which full fledged

graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as GNOME and KDE are designed

upon.

Updated XFree86 packages that fix a privilege escalation vulnerability are now available.

XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System, providing the core graphical user interface and video drivers.

iDefense discovered two buffer overflows in the parsing of the 'font.alias' file. A local attacker could exploit this vulnerability by creating a carefully-crafted file and gaining root privileges. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CAN-2004-0083 and CAN-2004-0084 to these issues.

Additionally David Dawes discovered additional flaws in reading font files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2004-0106 to these issues.

All users of XFree86 are advised to upgrade to these erratum packages, which contain a backported fix and are not vulnerable to these issues.

Red Hat would like to thank David Dawes from XFree86 for the patches and notification of these issues.

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