GLSA 200705-20: Blackdown Java: Applet privilege escalation

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	normal
Title:	Blackdown Java: Applet privilege escalation
Date:	05/26/2007
Bugs:	#161835
ID:	200705-20

Synopsis

The Blackdown JDK and the Blackdown JRE suffer from the multiple unspecified vulnerabilities that already affected the Sun JDK and JRE.

Background

Blackdown provides implementations of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
dev-java/blackdown-jdk	< 1.4.2.03-r14	>= 1.4.2.03-r14	All supported architectures
dev-java/blackdown-jre	< 1.4.2.03-r14	>= 1.4.2.03-r14	All supported architectures

Description

Chris Evans has discovered multiple buffer overflows in the Sun JDK and the Sun JRE possibly related to various AWT and font layout functions. Tom Hawtin has discovered an unspecified vulnerability in the Sun JDK and the Sun JRE relating to unintended applet data access. He has also discovered multiple other unspecified vulnerabilities in the Sun JDK and the Sun JRE allowing unintended Java applet or application resource acquisition. Additionally, a memory corruption error has been found in the handling of GIF images with zero width field blocks.

Impact

An attacker could entice a user to run a specially crafted Java applet or application that could read, write, or execute local files with the privileges of the user running the JVM, access data maintained in other Java applets, or escalate the privileges of the currently running Java applet or application allowing for unauthorized access to system resources.

Workaround

Disable the "nsplugin" USE flag in order to prevent web applets from being run.

Resolution

Since there is no fixed update from Blackdown and since the flaw only occurs in the applets, the "nsplugin" USE flag has been masked in the portage tree. Emerge the ebuild again in order to fix the vulnerability. Another solution is to switch to another Java implementation such as the Sun implementation (dev-java/sun-jdk and dev-java/sun-jre-bin).

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose "dev-java/blackdown-jdk"
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose "dev-java/blackdown-jre"

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200705-20.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.