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CERT* Vendor-Initiated Bulletin VB-98.04
April 27, 1998
Topic: Vulnerabilities in xterm and Xaw
Source: The Open Group
To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, the
CERT Coordination Center is forwarding the following information from
The Open Group. The Open Group urges you to act on this information as
soon as possible. Further questions about these vulnerabilities should
be directed to your vendor or support personnel.
=======================FORWARDED TEXT STARTS HERE============================
______________________________________________________________________________
The Open Group X Project Team Security Advisory
Title: xterm and Xaw library vulnerability
Date: April 27, 1998
______________________________________________________________________________
The Open Group X Project Team provides this information freely to the X11
user community for its consideration, interpretation, implementation and use.
The Open Group X Project Team recommends that this information be acted upon
as soon as possible.
The Open Group X Project Team provides the information in this Security
Advisory on an "AS-IS" basis only, and disclaims all warranties with respect
thereto, express, implied or otherwise, including, without limitation, any
warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event
shall The Open Group be liable for any loss of profits, loss of business, loss
of data or for any indirect, special, exemplary, incidental or consequential
damages of any kind arising from your use of, failure to use or improper
use of any of the instructions or information in this Security Advisory.
______________________________________________________________________________
I. Description
Vulnerabilities exist in the terminal emulator xterm(1), and the Xaw
library distributed in various MIT X Consortium; X Consortium, Inc.;
and The Open Group X Project Team releases. These vulnerabilities may
be exploited by an intruder to gain root access.
The resources and the releases affected by the xterm vulnerability are:
Resources
inputMethod preeditType *Keymap
Release
X11R3 NO NO YES
X11R4 NO NO YES
X11R5 NO NO YES
X11R6 NO NO YES
X11R6.1 YES YES YES
X11R6.2 YES YES YES
X11R6.3 YES YES YES
X11R6.4 YES YES YES
The resources and the releases affected by the Xaw library
vulnerability are
Resources
inputMethod preeditType
Release
X11R6 YES YES
X11R6.1 YES YES
X11R6.2 YES YES
X11R6.3 YES YES
X11R6.4 YES YES
(X11R6.2 was not released to the public.)
The Open Group X Project Team has investigated the issue and recommends
the following steps for neutralizing the exposure. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
that these measures be implemented on ALL vulnerable systems. This issue
will be corrected in future X Project Team releases of X11.
- - - --------------
- - - --- Impact ---
- - - --------------
By crafting an arbitrarily long string that contains embedded machine code
and using it to set specific "resources", a user may obtain a shell prompt
that has root privileges.
Anyone using the MIT X Consortium; X Consortium, Inc.; or X Project Team
xterm and that has xterm installed setuid-root may be vulnerable.
Anyone using an xterm based on any of the sources listed above may
also be vulnerable to the xterm vulnerability.
In order to be vulnerable to the Xaw library vulnerability, the Xaw
Text widget must be used by a setuid-root program. Anyone using an
Xaw replacement based on any of the released versions of Xaw listed
above (e.g. Xaw3d) may also be vulnerable to the Xaw vulnerability.
- - - --------------------------
- - - --- Temporary Solution ---
- - - --------------------------
1) Become the root user on the system.
% /bin/su -
Password:
#
2) Remove the setuid-root bit from the xterm binary.
# chmod 0755 <path-to-xterm>/xterm
For the Xaw vulnerability, remove the suid-root bit from any programs
which use the Xaw text widget.
2) Remove the setuid-root bit from the binary.
# chmod 0755 <setuid-root-program>
- - - ----------------
- - - --- Solution ---
- - - ----------------
Patches to address this vulnerability have been given to X Project Team
members:
Astec
Attachmate
BARCO Chromatics
CliniComp International
Digital
Hewlett-Packard
Hitachi
Hummingbird Communications
IBM
Jupiter Systems
Metro Link
Network Computing Devices
NetManage
Peritek
Seaweed Systems
Sequent Computer Systems
Shiman Associates
Silicon Graphics
Societe Axel
Siemens Nixdorf
Starnet
SunSoft
WRQ
Xi Graphics
The X Project Team periodically makes public patches available to fix a
variety of problems. Announcements about the availability of these patches
is announced on the Usenet comp.windows.x.announce newsgroup. The patches,
when they become available, may be found on ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/fixes/.
The X Project Team only supplies patches for the latest release -- we do
not make patches for prior releases.
Information on joining The Open Group can be found at
http://www.opengroup.org/howtojoin.htm
========================FORWARDED TEXT ENDS HERE=============================
If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact the CERT
Coordination Center or your representative in the Forum of Incident Response
and Security Teams (FIRST). See http://www.first.org/team-info/.
We strongly urge you to encrypt any sensitive information you send by email.
The CERT Coordination Center can support a shared DES key and PGP. Contact
the CERT staff for more information.
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CERT Contact Information
- ------------------------
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This file: ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/cert_bulletins/VB-98.04.xterm.Xaw
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