- Issued:
- 2003-02-06
- Updated:
- 2003-03-19
RHSA-2003:055 - Security Advisory
Synopsis
rxvt security update
Type/Severity
Security Advisory: Important
Topic
Updated rxvt packages are available which fix a number of vulnerabilities
in the handling of escape sequences.
[Updated 12 March 2003]
Added packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux WS
Description
Rxvt is a color VT102 terminal emulator for the X Window System. A number
of issues have been found in the escape sequence handling of Rxvt.
These could be potentially exploited if an attacker can cause carefully
crafted escape sequences to be displayed on an rxvt terminal being used by
their victim.
One of the features which most terminal emulators support is the ability
for the shell to set the title of the window using an escape sequence.
Certain xterm variants, including rxvt, 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. Since it is not
possible to embed a carriage return into the window title itself, the
attacker would have to convince the victim to press the Enter key for the
title to be processed as a command, although the attacker can perform a
number of actions to increase the likelihood of this happening.
A certain escape sequence when displayed in rxvt will create an arbitrary
file.
It is possible to add malicious items to the dynamic menus through an
escape sequence.
Users of Rxvt are advised to upgrade to these errata packages which contain
a patch to disable the title reporting functionality and patches to correct
the other issues.
Red Hat would like to thank H D Moore for bringing these issues to our
attention.
Solution
Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.
Please note that this update is available via Red Hat Network. 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.
Affected Products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 2 ia64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 2 i386
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 2 ia64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 2 i386
Fixes
- BZ - 84587 - rxvt contains a number of vulnerabilities in escape sequences
References
(none)
The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.