Red Hat Linux General Security Advisory

Red Hat, Inc. Security Advisory Synopsis new modutils release addresses more local root compromise possibilities Advisory ID RHSA-2000:108-05 Issue Date 2000-11-16 Updated On 2000-11-27 Product Red Hat Linux Keywords modutils root exploit security Cross References N/A 1. Topic: A new modutils-2.3.21 package has been released to correctly enable safe guard measures introduced in modutils-2.3.20. 2000-11-27: Added packages for Red Hat Linux 7 for Alpha 2. Problem description: The previous packages of modutils released to address a local root compromise contained an error in new safe guards that caused them to not properly be enabled when run as root from the kmod process. These new safe guards check the arguments passed to modules. The new 2.3.21 modutils package fixes this error and correctly checks the arguments when running from kmod, limiting kernel module arguments to those specified in /etc/conf.modules (on Red Hat Linux 6.2) or /etc/modules.conf (on Red Hat Linux 7). This release supersedes the previous modutils errata packages. 3. Bug IDs fixed: (see bugzilla for more information) 20749 - local root exploit via modutils 4. Relevant releases/architectures: Red Hat Linux 6.2 - i386, alpha, sparc Red Hat Linux 7.0 - i386, alpha 5. RPMs required: Red Hat Linux 6.2: alpha: ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/en/os/alpha/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.alpha.rpm sparc: ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/en/os/sparc/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.sparc.rpm i386: ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/en/os/i386/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.i386.rpm sources: ftp://updates.redhat.com/6.2/en/os/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.src.rpm Red Hat Linux 7.0: alpha: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/alpha/modutils-2.3.21-1.alpha.rpm i386: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/i386/modutils-2.3.21-1.i386.rpm sources: ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.src.rpm 6. Solution: For each RPM for your particular architecture, run: rpm -Fvh [filename] where filename is the name of the RPM. 2000-11-17: For Red Hat Linux 6.2, if you installed the previous modutils-2.3.20-0.6.2 packages, you will need to run: mv /etc/modules.conf /etc/conf.modules 7. Verification: MD5 sum Package Name ------------------------------------------------------------------------- b21fb3e4bdef79b28c3cfbd679fa9543 6.2/en/os/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.src.rpm 73953a51d51d173b8acbf93ef387fd81 6.2/en/os/alpha/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.alpha.rpm 4439637a314f3bb60970795d614022b1 6.2/en/os/i386/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.i386.rpm c063d22e0aeeaa762e5bd9903af42cc3 6.2/en/os/sparc/modutils-2.3.21-0.6.2.sparc.rpm 3ae5ad039cb895f0599d4d52ccf61275 7.0/en/os/SRPMS/modutils-2.3.21-1.src.rpm 6f68c415e4ec7f18bc68e987e488056b 7.0/en/os/alpha/modutils-2.3.21-1.alpha.rpm 46b7f3331bccd927d9d7fefbec74f721 7.0/en/os/i386/modutils-2.3.21-1.i386.rpm These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat, Inc. for security. Our key is available at: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact.html You can verify each package with the following command: rpm --checksig filename If you only wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or tampered with, examine only the md5sum with the following command: rpm --checksig --nogpg filename Note that you need RPM >= 3.0 to check GnuPG keys. 8. References: N/A