Debian DSA-042-1 : gnuserv

high Nessus Plugin ID 14879

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

Klaus Frank has found a vulnerability in the way gnuserv handled remote connections. Gnuserv is a remote control facility for Emacsen which is available as standalone program as well as included in XEmacs21. Gnuserv has a buffer for which insufficient boundary checks were made. Unfortunately this buffer affected access control to gnuserv which is using a MIT-MAGIC-COOCKIE based system. It is possible to overflow the buffer containing the cookie and foozle cookie comparison.

Gnuserv was derived from emacsserver which is part of GNU Emacs. It was reworked completely and not much is left over from its time as part of GNU Emacs. Therefore the versions of emacsserver in both Emacs19 and Emacs20 doesn't look vulnerable to this bug, they don't even provide a MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE based mechanism.

This could lead into a remote user issue commands under the UID of the person running gnuserv.

Solution

Upgrade the affected gnuserv, and xemacs21 packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 14879

File Name: debian_DSA-042.nasl

Version: 1.21

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Debian Local Security Checks

Published: 9/29/2004

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:gnuserv, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:xemacs21, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:2.2

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 3/9/2001

Reference Information

BID: 2333

DSA: 042

Detections

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