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                        SuSE Security Announcement

        Package:  proftpd-1.2.0pre6 and earlier
        Date:     Thu Sep 16 20:59:18 CEST 1999
        Affected: all UNIX platforms using proftpd
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A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using
this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s).

Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as
well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue.

Please note, that that we provide this information on as "as-is" basis only.
There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or
incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of
the update package.
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1. Problem Description

  Several buffer overflows have been found in proftpd which have been
  verified to be exploitable from an remote attacker.

  The fixing and finding of new holes is going on for over 2 weeks now,
  and there is no end in sight.

  Even with all known fixes, proftpd is still vulnerable to remote
  exploitation.

2. Impact

  A remote attacker can gain root access to the system from remote.

3. Solution

  Deactivate, or better, deinstall the proftpd package.

  Proftpd will be dropped from current distributions until there can be
  put trust in this package.

  We will provide an update, once a completely fixed version is out.
  
  Until then, please use a secure ftpd server.
  If you only need to provide readonly anonymous ftp access, we encourage
  you to get the anon-ftpd from Bernstein from 
    Otherwise, we recommend to run the stock ftpd which comes by default with
  SuSE and is derived from OpenBSD.

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Webpage for patches:
  http://www.suse.de/patches/index.html

or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors:
  http://www.suse.de/ftp.html
  
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