Scientific Linux SL6.x Moderate Advisory: gdb Security Risk Mitigated

Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:17:10 -0600
Reply-To: Pat Riehecky 
Sender: Security Errata for Scientific Linux
 
From: Pat Riehecky 
Organization: Fermilab
Subject: Security ERRATA Moderate: gdb on SL6.x i386/x86_64
MIME-Version: 1.0

Synopsis: Moderate: gdb security and bug fix update
Issue Date: 2013-02-21
CVE Numbers: CVE-2011-4355
--

GDB tried to auto-load certain files (such as GDB scripts, Python
scripts, and a thread debugging library) from the current working directory when
debugging programs. This could result in the execution of arbitrary code with the
user's privileges when GDB was run in a directory that has untrusted content.
(CVE-2011-4355)

With this update, GDB no longer auto-loads files from the current
directory and only trusts certain system directories by default. The list of trusted
directories can be viewed and modified using the "show auto-load
safe-path" and "set auto-load safe-path" GDB commands. Refer to the GDB manual, linked
to in the References, for further information.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* When a struct member was at an offset greater than 256 MB, the
resulting bit position within the struct overflowed and caused an invalid memory access by
GDB. With this update, the code has been modified to ensure that GDB can
access such positions.

* When a thread list of the core file became corrupted, GDB did not
print this list but displayed the "Cannot find new threads: generic error" error
message instead. With this update, GDB has been modified and it now prints the
thread list of the core file as expected.

* GDB did not properly handle debugging of multiple binaries with the same
build ID. This update modifies GDB to use symbolic links created for
particular binaries so that debugging of binaries that share a build ID now proceeds as
expected. Debugging of live programs and core files is now more
user-friendly.
--

SL6
 x86_64
 gdb-7.2-60.el6.x86_64.rpm
 gdb-debuginfo-7.2-60.el6.x86_64.rpm
 gdb-gdbserver-7.2-60.el6.x86_64.rpm
 i386
 gdb-7.2-60.el6.i686.rpm
 gdb-debuginfo-7.2-60.el6.i686.rpm
 gdb-gdbserver-7.2-60.el6.i686.rpm

- Scientific Linux Development Team