initscripts in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 does not properly handle certain environment variables when /sbin/service is executed, which allows local users with sudo permissions for /sbin/service to gain root privileges via unknown vectors.

Updated initscripts packages that fix a privilege escalation issue and several bugs are now available.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The initscripts package contains the basic system scripts used to boot your Red Hat system, change runlevels, and shut the system down cleanly. Initscripts also contains the scripts that activate and deactivate most network interfaces.

A bug was found in the way initscripts handled various environment variables when the /sbin/service command is run. It is possible for a local user with permissions to execute /sbin/service via sudo to execute arbitrary commands as the 'root' user. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project assigned the name CVE-2005-3629 to this issue.

The following issues have also been fixed in this update :

* extraneous characters were logged on bootup.

* fsck would be attempted on filesystems marked with _netdev in rc.sysinit before they were available.

Additionally, support for multi-core Itanium processors has been added to redhat-support-check.

All users of initscripts should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.

An updated initscripts package that fixes a privilege escalation issue and several bugs is now available.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The initscripts package contains the basic system scripts used to boot your Red Hat system, change runlevels, and shut the system down cleanly. Initscripts also contains the scripts that activate and deactivate most network interfaces.

A bug was found in the way initscripts handled various environment variables when the /sbin/service command is run. It is possible for a local user with permissions to execute /sbin/service via sudo to execute arbitrary commands as the 'root' user. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) assigned the name CVE-2005-3629 to this issue.

The following issues have also been fixed in this update :

* extraneous characters were logged on bootup

* fsck was attempted on file systems marked with _netdev in rc.sysinit before they were available

* the dynamically-linked /sbin/multipath was called instead of the correct /sbin/multiplath.static

Additionally, this update includes support for partitioned multipath devices and a technology preview of static IP over InifiniBand.

All users of initscripts should upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these issues.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
21878	CentOS 3 : initscripts (CESA-2006:0015)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high
21086	RHEL 3 : initscripts (RHSA-2006:0015)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
21029	RHEL 4 : initscripts (RHSA-2006:0016)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2005-3629

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high