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Red Hat 8.0 RHSA-2003:053-10 Critical: Gnome-Terminal Title Exploit

Updated vte packages that fix a vulnerability in gnome-terminal are available for Red Hat Linux 8.0.. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat Security Advisory Synopsis: Updated vte packages fix gnome-terminal vulnerability Advisory ID: RHSA-2003:053-10 Issue date: 2003-02-06 Updated on: 2003-02-24 Product: Red Hat Linux Keywords: window title Cross references: Obsoletes: CVE Names: CAN-2003-0070 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Topic: Updated vte packages that fix a vulnerability in gnome-terminal are available for Red Hat Linux 8.0. 2. Relevant releases/architectures: Red Hat Linux 8.0 - i386 3. Problem description: VTE is an terminal emulator widget used by software such as gnome-terminal. One feature that most terminal emulators support is the ability for the shell to set the title of the window using an escape sequence. Certain xterm variants also provide an escape sequence for reporting the current window title. This essentially takes the current title and places it directly on the command line. This feature could be potentially exploited if an attacker can cause carefully crafted escape sequences to be displayed on a vulnerable terminal emulator used by their victim. Since it is not possible to embed a carriage return into the window title itself, the attacker would have to convince the victim to hit enter for it to process the title as a command, although the attacker can perform a number of actions to increase the likelyhood of this happening. VTE is vulnerable to this issue and is used as the default terminal emulator for versions of gnome-terminal shipped with Red Hat Linux 8.0. Previous releases of Red Hat Linux do not contain a vulnerable version of gnome-terminal. Users of gnome-terminal on Red Hat Linux 8.0 are advised to upgrade to these errata packages, which contain a patch to disable the titlereporting functionality. Red Hat would like to thank H D Moore for bringing these issues to our attention. Please note; because this update contains a fixed shared library used by gnome-terminal, the vulnerable code will continue to be in use as long as any gnome-terminal session remains active. The easiest way to ensure that the vulnerable code is no longer in use is to log out of your window manager. Alternatively all running gnome-terminal sessions can be closed. 4. Solution: Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata relevant to your system have been applied. To update all RPMs for your particular architecture, run: rpm -Fvh [filenames] where [filenames] is a list of the RPMs you wish to upgrade. Only those RPMs which are currently installed will be updated. Those RPMs which are not installed but included in the list will not be updated. Note that you can also use wildcards (*.rpm) if your current directory *only* contains the desired RPMs. Please note that this update is also available via Red Hat Network. Many people find this an easier way to apply updates. To use Red Hat Network, launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command: up2date This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate RPMs being upgraded on your system. 5. RPMs required: Red Hat Linux 8.0: SRPMS: i386: 6. Verification: MD5 sum Package Name -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2b91fffb6e98aa9542cbdb3a0508cc49 8.0/en/os/SRPMS/vte-0.8.19-2.src.rpm a274eeb1dd40afeed45ea2f7601a6bac 8.0/en/os/i386/vte-0.8.19-2.i386.rpm e4172c1224bc77357a0f0a8c315f2dc5 8.0/en/os/i386/vte-devel-0.8.19-2.i386.rpm These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat, Inc. for security. Our key is available at About You can verify each package with the following command: rpm --checksig -v If you only wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or tampered with, examine only the md5sum withthe following command: md5sum 7. References: CVE -CVE-2003-0070 8. Contact: The Red Hat security contact is . More contact details at All Red Hat products Copyright 2003 Red Hat, Inc. . Recent vte patches released for Red Hat 8.0 tackle critical gnome-terminal exploit impacting window titles.. Red Hat Linux, Gnome-Terminal Patch, VTE Update, Terminal Emulator, Exploit Fix. . Severity: Critical. LinuxSecurity.com Team

Feb 26, 2003 •Critical Red Hat