Oval Definition:oval:com.redhat.rhsa:def:20100819
Revision Date:2010-11-01Version:638
Title:RHSA-2010:0819: pam security update (Moderate)
Description:Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) provide a system whereby administrators can set up authentication policies without having to recompile programs that handle authentication.

  • It was discovered that the pam_namespace module executed the external script namespace.init with an unchanged environment inherited from an application calling PAM. In cases where such an environment was untrusted (for example, when pam_namespace was configured for setuid applications such as su or sudo), a local, unprivileged user could possibly use this flaw to escalate their privileges. (CVE-2010-3853)

  • It was discovered that the pam_mail module used root privileges while accessing users' files. In certain configurations, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to obtain limited information about files or directories that they do not have access to. (CVE-2010-3435)

  • It was discovered that the pam_xauth module did not verify the return values of the setuid() and setgid() system calls. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to execute the xauth command with root privileges and make it read an arbitrary input file. (CVE-2010-3316)

    Red Hat would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for reporting the CVE-2010-3435 issue.

    All pam users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.
  • Family:unixClass:patch
    Status:Reference(s):CVE-2010-3316
    CVE-2010-3435
    CVE-2010-3853
    CVE-2010-4707
    RHSA-2010:0819
    RHSA-2010:0819-01
    RHSA-2010:0819-01
    Platform(s):Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
    Product(s):
    Definition Synopsis
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux must be installed
  • OR Package Information
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is installed
  • AND
  • pam is earlier than 0:0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2
  • AND pam is signed with Red Hat redhatrelease2 key
  • pam-devel is earlier than 0:0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2
  • AND pam-devel is signed with Red Hat redhatrelease2 key
  • BACK