Stay Secure with the Latest Linux Advisories

security advisorycriticalSUSE

SuSE: Security Advisory - Critical Talkback Issue in Netscape 4.5

The Netscape Communicator 4.5 comes with "talkback", a quality enhancement tool by Fullcircle (www.fullcircle.com). If the communicator crashs for any reason, the file with the name /tmp/.$UID.talkback is read in, and the pid in this file is killed. After that, the file is truncated/created without checks for {sym|hard}links and the pid of the current talkback process is written into the file.. ______________________________________________________________________________ SuSE Security Announcement Package: netscape-4.5-9 Date: Thu Mar 18 10:22:11 CET 1999 Affected: unix operating systems using netscape communicator 4.5 ______________________________________________________________________________ A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above. Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s). Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue. Please note, that that we provide this information on as "as-is" basis only. There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of the update package. ______________________________________________________________________________ 1. Problem Description The Netscape Communicator 4.5 comes with "talkback", a quality enhancement tool by Fullcircle (www.fullcircle.com). If the communicator crashs for any reason, the file with the name /tmp/.$UID.talkback is read in, and the pid in this file is killed. After that, the file is truncated/created without checks for {sym|hard}links and the pid of the current talkback process is written into the file. 2. Impact Anyone on the system can kill a process of users if their communicator crashs. Anyone on the system can overwrite/create any filean attacked users# has write access to. We didn't check if there's a buffer overflow possible when the talkback application reads in the file. 3. Solution Disable talkback. You may do this my executing the following commands (your path to netscape may differ): /bin/mv /opt/netscape/talkback /opt/netscape/talkback.disable /bin/chmod -R 600 /opt/netscape/talkback Netscape responded to this vulnerability that the current version does not install the talkback application. You may install the new version 4.51 from Netscape which also fixes some other security vulnerabilities. However, if you update from a 4.5 installation, ensure that you execute the lines above. ______________________________________________________________________________ SuSE has got two free security mailing list services to which any interested party may subscribe: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - unmoderated and for general/linux/SuSE security discussions. All SuSE security announcements are send to this list. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - SuSE's announce-only mailing list. Only SuSE's security annoucements are sent to this list. To subscribe, send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the text subscribe suse-security or subscribe suse-security-announce in the body of the message. Or just issue a echo subscribe suse-security | mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or echo subscribe suse-security-announce | mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ______________________________________________________________________________ If you want to report *NEW* security bugs in the SuSE Linux Distribution please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call our support line. You may use pgp with the public key below to ensure confidentiality. ______________________________________________________________________________ This information is provided freelyto everyone interested and may be redistributed provided that it is not altered in any way. Type Bits/KeyID Date User ID pub 2048/3D25D3D9 1999/03/06 SuSE Security Team . ______________________________________________________________________________ SuSE Security Announc. netscape, communicator, comes, 'talkback', quality, enhancement, fullcircle. . Severity: Critical. LinuxSecurity.com Team

Dec 07, 1999 •Critical SuSE