FreeBSD Security Advisories
2001-Jan-15 14:31 UTC
FreeBSD Ports Security Advisory: FreeBSD-SA-01:02.syslog-ng
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ============================================================================FreeBSD-SA-01:02 Security Advisory FreeBSD, Inc. Topic: syslog-ng remote denial-of-service Category: ports Module: syslog-ng Announced: 2001-01-15 Credits: Balazs Scheidler <bazsi@BALABIT.HU> Affects: Ports collection prior to the correction date. Corrected: 2000-11-25 Vendor status: Updated version released FreeBSD only: NO I. Background syslog-ng is a replacement for the standard syslogd daemon, a service for logging of local and remote system messages. II. Problem Description The syslog-ng port, versions prior to 1.4.9, contains a remote vulnerability. Due to incorrect log parsing, remote users may cause syslog-ng to crash, causing a denial-of-service if the daemon is not running under a watchdog process which will automatically restart it in the event of failure. The syslog-ng port is not installed by default, nor is it "part of FreeBSD" as such: it is part of the FreeBSD ports collection, which contains nearly 4500 third-party applications in a ready-to-install format. The ports collections shipped with FreeBSD 3.5.1 and 4.2 contain this problem since it was discovered after the releases. 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 Malicious remote attackers may cause syslog-ng to crash, causing a denial-of-service if the daemon is not running under a watchdog process which will automatically restart it in the event of failure. The default installation of the port/package is therefore vulnerable to this problem. If you have not chosen to install the syslog-ng port/package, then your system is not vulnerable to this problem. IV. Workaround Deinstall the syslog-ng port/package, if you have installed it. V. Solution One of the following: 1) Upgrade your entire ports collection and rebuild the syslog-ng port. 2) Deinstall the old package and install a new package dated after the correction date, obtained from: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/sysutils/syslog-ng-1.4.10.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/sysutils/syslog-ng-1.4.10.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-4-stable/sysutils/syslog-ng-1.4.10.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current/sysutils/syslog-ng-1.4.10.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-5-current/sysutils/syslog-ng-1.4.10.tgz 3) download a new port skeleton for the syslog-ng 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/i386/packages-3-stable/devel/portcheckout-2.0.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/devel/portcheckout-2.0.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-4-stable/devel/portcheckout-2.0.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current/devel/portcheckout-2.0.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-5-current/devel/portcheckout-2.0.tgz -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iQCVAwUBOmN6R1UuHi5z0oilAQGfWgP/Yd6fjKCernj84HSuHgdXCxT3g27VFub6 9k62GJ1wiwz8S3v4zvx1C1xbhE+pgBv+EuBe8SEp0R2BtKC/RdcrWAwYtxvqA/6d yknNjwBSJ2yvkZMzeG2pZXsy6TG8n6lIiEp0aCWqOsSn5FgykXg1YfAXiJ1Mo0Gu aNKBcOEMCag=0IjM -----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