1. Topic:
A buffer overflow has been fixed in the tgetent() function of libtermcap.

2. Bug IDs fixed:
4538

3. Relevant releases/architectures:
Red Hat Linux 6.0, all architectures

4. Obsoleted by:
None

5. Conflicts with:
None

6. RPMs required:

Intel:

libtermcap-2.0.8-15.i386.rpm
libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.i386.rpm

Alpha:

libtermcap-2.0.8-15.alpha.rpm
libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.alpha.rpm

SPARC:

libtermcap-2.0.8-15.sparc.rpm
libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.sparc.rpm

Source:

libtermcap-2.0.8-15.src.rpm

Architecture neutral:

7. Problem description:
A buffer overflow existed in libtermcap's tgetent() function, which could cause the user to execute arbitrary code if they were able to supply their own termcap file.

Under Red Hat Linux 5.2 and 4.2, this could lead to local users gaining root privileges, as xterm (as well as other possibly setuid programs) are linked against libtermcap. Under Red Hat Linux 6.0, xterm is not setuid root.

Thanks go to Kevin Vajk and the Linux Security Audit team for noting and providing a fix for this vulnerability.

8. Solution:
For each RPM for your particular architecture, run:

rpm -Uvh filename

where filename is the name of the RPM.

9. Verification:

 MD5 sum                           Package Name

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

4995cf0a7c181abe56565d82f12c7819  i386/libtermcap-2.0.8-15.i386.rpm

59d18de3f22abe5674575961b1390177  i386/libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.i386.rpm

611cdfb7f167242e7d3b2eaac866705a  alpha/libtermcap-2.0.8-15.alpha.rpm

76098235237b5f051ad1266193d7b259  alpha/libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.alpha.rpm

846ad7a73b25d3eceab1949322337e14  sparc/libtermcap-2.0.8-15.sparc.rpm

6ddde808ec8b5bc7960851ef3188a6dd  sparc/libtermcap-devel-2.0.8-15.sparc.rpm

6a29851494601540d642ff557bd590d6  SRPMS/libtermcap-2.0.8-15.src.rpm







 

You can verify each package with the following command:

rpm --checksig filename

If you only wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or tampered with, examine only the md5sum with the following command:

rpm --checksig --nopgp filename

10. References: