FreeBSD Security Officer
2000-Apr-10 13:59 UTC
FreeBSD Security Advisory: FreeBSD-SA-00:11.ircii
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ============================================================================FreeBSD-SA-00:11 Security Advisory FreeBSD, Inc. Topic: ircII port contains a remote overflow Category: ports Module: ircII Announced: 2000-04-10 Credits: Derek Callaway <super@UDEL.EDU> via BugTraq "bladi" <bladi@EUSKALNET.NET> via BugTraq Affects: Ports collection before the correction date. Corrected: 2000-03-19 FreeBSD only: NO I. Background ircII is a popular text-mode IRC client. II. Problem Description ircII version 4.4 contained a remotely-exploitable buffer overflow in the /DCC CHAT command which allows remote users to execute arbitrary code as the client user. The bug was originally reported in 1997 in a much older version of ircII, but was apparently not corrected at the time, and the problem was recently rediscovered independently. Development on the version of ircII previously in ports ceased several years ago, and has been taken up by a new group who have fixed this problem (and possibly others). FreeBSD now provides this new version of ircII. The ircII port is not installed by default, nor is it "part of FreeBSD" as such: it is part of the FreeBSD ports collection, which contains over 3200 third-party applications in a ready-to-install format. FreeBSD 4.0 did not ship with the ircII package available because this vulnerability was reported to us late in the release cycle and it was not possible to upgrade the port in time. FreeBSD makes no claim about the security of these third-party applications, although an effort is underway to provide a security audit of the most security-critical ports. III. Impact A remote user can cause arbitrary code to be executed on the local system as the user running ircII. If you have not chosen to install the ircII port/package, then your system is not known to be vulnerable to this problem, although there are several other IRC clients which are derived from ircII including Epic and BitchX. At this time it is unknown whether other clients are vulnerable to this problem. IV. Workaround Remove the ircII port, if you you have installed it. V. Solution 1) Upgrade your entire ports collection and rebuild the ircII port. 2) Reinstall a new package dated after the correction date, obtained from: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/irc/ircII-4.4S.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/irc/ircII-4.4S.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-3-stable/irc/ircII-4.4S.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current/irc/ircII-4.4S.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-5-current/irc/ircII-4.4S.tgz 3) download a new port skeleton for the ircII port from: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ and use it to rebuild the port. 4) Use the portcheckout utility to automate option (3) above. The portcheckout port is available in /usr/ports/devel/portcheckout or the package can be obtained from: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/devel/portcheckout-1.0.tgz -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBOPJAMVUuHi5z0oilAQHKpgQAjdphg+Xaw4J7J5+dowvgrgoggA4YG0P5 a7Nodawpvm2ya8jBStmi0cs3LhYIXZUPQfY3lqiAfEbf4Ndd4r5KUbQ+iAjgz4lZ XHG0PjUGE98dK3eHZbLszaMIwPbBaCyicCD0gLPCVm40O0VOlqY+WHO9MfITgpec GFF3l8b8Ym0=IU1d -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- This is the moderated mailing list freebsd-announce. The list contains announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities, important events and project milestones. See also the FreeBSD Web pages at http://www.freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-announce" in the body of the message