GLSA 200311-01: kdebase: KDM vulnerabilities

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	normal
Title:	kdebase: KDM vulnerabilities
Date:	11/15/2003
Bugs:	#29406
ID:	200311-01

Synopsis

A bug in KDM can allow privilege escalation with certain configurations of PAM modules.

Background

KDM is the desktop manager included with the K Desktop Environment.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
kde-base/kdebase	<= 3.1.3	>= 3.1.4	All supported architectures

Description

Firstly, versions of KDM <=3.1.3 are vulnerable to a privilege escalation bug with a specific configuration of PAM modules. Users who do not use PAM with KDM and users who use PAM with regular Unix crypt/MD5 based authentication methods are not affected.

Secondly, KDM uses a weak cookie generation algorithm. Users are advised to upgrade to KDE 3.1.4, which uses /dev/urandom as a non-predictable source of entropy to improve security.

Impact

A remote or local attacker could gain root privileges.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

It is recommended that all Gentoo Linux users who are running kde-base/kdebase <=3.1.3 upgrade:

    # emerge sync
    # emerge -pv '>=kde-base/kde-3.1.4'
    # emerge '>=kde-base/kde-3.1.4'
    # emerge clean

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200311-01.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.