Debian DSA-422-1 : cvs - remote vulnerability

high Nessus Plugin ID 15259

Synopsis

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

Description

The account management of the CVS pserver (which is used to give remote access to CVS repositories) uses a CVSROOT/passwd file in each repository which contains the accounts and their authentication information as well as the name of the local unix account to use when a pserver account is used. Since CVS performed no checking on what unix account was specified anyone who could modify the CVSROOT/passwdcould gain access to all local users on the CVS server, including root.

Solution

This has been fixed in upstream version 1.11.11 by preventing pserver from running as root. For Debian this problem is solved in version 1.11.1p1debian-9 in two different ways :

- pserver is no longer allowed to use root to access repositories
- a new /etc/cvs-repouid is introduced which can be used by the system administrator to override the unix account used to access a repository. More information on this change can be found at

Additionally, CVS pserver had a bug in parsing module requests which could be used to create files and directories outside a repository.
This has been fixed upstream in version 1.11.11 and Debian version 1.11.1p1debian-9.

Finally, the umask used for 'cvs init' and 'cvs-makerepos' has been changed to prevent repositories from being created with group write permissions.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 15259

File Name: debian_DSA-422.nasl

Version: 1.16

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:cvs, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:3.0

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

Patch Publication Date: 1/13/2004

Reference Information

DSA: 422

Detections

Analytics