Thank you for reading the Linux Advisory Watch Security Newsletter. The purpose of this document is to provide our readers with a quick summary of each week's vendor security bulletins and pointers on methods to improve the security posture of your open source system. Vulnerabilities affect nearly every vendor virtually every week, so be sure to read through to find the updates your distributor have made available.

LinuxSecurity.com Feature Extras:

Squid and Digest Authentication - Digest AuthenticationDigest Authentication hashes the password before transmitting over the wire. Essentially it sends a message digest generated from multiple items including username, realm and nonce value. If you want to know more see (RFC 2617).

Squid and Basic Authentication - This is perhaps the easiest authentication helper to configure in Squid, but also the most insecure. The biggest problem with Basic is it transmits username and password in clear text, hence very susceptible to network sniffing or man in the middle type attacks. The only reason I'm writing about it is it's a valid authentication mechanism in some limited circumstances. Secondly I want to show you how authentication has evolved over the years.

(Dec 1)

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in OpenJDK, an implementation of the Java platform: CVE-2011-3389 [More...]
(Nov 30)

Leo Iannacone and Colin Watson discovered a format string vulnerability in the Python bindings for the Clearsilver HTML template system, which may lead to denial of service or the execution of arbitrary code. [More...]
(Nov 30)

Petr Sklenar and Tomas Hoger discovered that missing input sanitising in the GIF decoder inside the Cups printing system could lead to denial of service or potentially arbitrary code execution through crafted GIF files. [More...]
(Nov 24)

David Wheeler discovered a buffer overflow in ldns's code to parse RR records, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. For the oldstable distribution (lenny), this problem has been fixed in [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:179: glibc (Nov 25)

Multiple vulnerabilities was discovered and fixed in glibc: The addmntent function in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) 2.13 and earlier does not report an error status for failed attempts to write to the /etc/mtab file, which makes it easier for local users [More...]
Mandriva: 2011:178: glibc (Nov 25)

Multiple vulnerabilities was discovered and fixed in glibc: Multiple untrusted search path vulnerabilities in elf/dl-object.c in certain modified versions of the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6), including glibc-2.5-49.el5_5.6 and glibc-2.12-1.7.el6_0.3 in Red Hat [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1507-01: libarchive: Moderate Advisory (Dec 1)

Updated libarchive packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1508-01: cyrus-imapd: Moderate Advisory (Dec 1)

Updated cyrus-imapd packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, and 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1496-01: bind: Important Advisory (Nov 29)

Updated bind packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1479-01: kernel: Important Advisory (Nov 29)

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having [More...]
Red Hat: 2011:1478-01: java-1.5.0-ibm: Critical Advisory (Nov 24)

Updated java-1.5.0-ibm packages that fix several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Extras, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 Supplementary. [More...]
Ubuntu: 1285-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities (Nov 29)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1283-1: APT vulnerability (Nov 28)

APT could be made to expose sensitive information over the network.
Ubuntu: 1282-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities (Nov 28)

Multiple vulnerabilities have been fixed in Thunderbird.
Ubuntu: 1281-1: Linux (OMAP4) vulnerabilities (Nov 24)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1280-1: Linux (OMAP4) vulnerabilities (Nov 24)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1279-1: Linux (Natty backport) vulnerabilities (Nov 24)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1278-1: Linux (Maverick backport) vulnerabilities (Nov 24)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Ubuntu: 1269-1: Linux kernel (EC2) vulnerabilities (Nov 24)

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.