FreeBSD Security Advisories
2000-Aug-28 12:41 UTC
FreeBSD Ports Security Advisory: FreeBSD-SA-00:39.netscape
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ============================================================================FreeBSD-SA-00:39 Security Advisory FreeBSD, Inc. Topic: Two vulnerabilities in Netscape Category: ports Module: netscape Announced: 2000-08-28 Credits: Solar Designer <solar@FALSE.COM> (Vulnerability #1) Dan Brumleve <dan+Bsecurity@brumleve.com> (Vulnerability #2) Affects: Ports collection prior to the correction date. Corrected: 2000-08-19 Vendor status: Updated version released FreeBSD only: NO I. Background Netscape is a popular web browser, available in several versions in the FreeBSD ports collection. II. Problem Description There are two security problems in recent versions of netscape: 1) Versions prior to 4.74 A client-side exploit may be possible through a buffer overflow in JPEG-handling code. Although an exploit is not known, attackers may be able to execute arbitrary code on the local machine as the user running netscape, or at the very least cause the netscape binary to crash. 2) Versions prior to 4.75 The Java Virtual Machine implementation has security vulnerabilities allowing a remote user to read the contents of local files accessible to the user running netscape, and to allow these files to be transmitted to any user on the internet. The netscape ports are not installed by default, nor are they "part of FreeBSD" as such: they are part of the FreeBSD ports collection, which contains over 3700 third-party applications in a ready-to-install format. The ports collections shipped with FreeBSD 3.5 and 4.1 are vulnerable to these problems. 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 Remote users can read files on the local system accessible to the user running netscape, if java is enabled, and may be able to execute arbitrary code on the local system as that user. If you have not chosen to install a netscape port/package, then your system is not vulnerable to this problem. IV. Workaround Deinstall the netscape port/package, if you you have installed it. Vulnerability 2) can be worked around by disabling Java in the "Advanced" section of the Preferences control panel. Vulnerability 1) can be worked around by disabling the "Automatically load images" option in the same location, although this is not a very practical workaround. V. Solution One of the following: 1) Upgrade your entire ports collection and rebuild the relevant netscape port. 2) Deinstall the old package and install a new package dated after the correction date, obtained from the following directories: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/www/ ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/www/ ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-4-stable/www/ ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current/www/ ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/alpha/packages-5-current/www/ Since there are so many variations of the netscape ports in the FreeBSD ports collection they are not listed separately here. Localized versions are also available in the respective language subdirectory. 3) download a new port skeleton for the netscape 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: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBOaqy41UuHi5z0oilAQGsgAP/TGyAq7u74FJ/rYkfmTd4qyiyjN2XF0nH 9Pikcu4EAJo8R0yhIU0mmXdK3HXWKRTKzH43+gLH6yZGVTr5SQu4a4RYgS4T8sbD Iu3p45DwYfZVQCjsJoseF48kaXlScheoxoR3+Et5khzhBDuwRedUXAK4VMWAm3Fp /4vWrTKykTc=A0Wy -----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
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