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Debian DSA-056-1 : man-db - local file overwrite

low Nessus Plugin ID 14893

Synopsis

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

Description

Ethan Benson found a bug in man-db packages as distributed in Debian GNU/Linux 2.2. man-db includes a mandb tool which is used to build an index of the manual pages installed on a system. When the -u or -c option were given on the command-line to tell it to write its database to a different location it failed to properly drop privileges before creating a temporary file. This makes it possible for an attacker to do a standard symlink attack to trick mandb into overwriting any file that is writable by uid man, which includes the man and mandb binaries.

Solution

This has been fixed in version 2.3.16-3, and we recommend that you upgrade your man-db package immediately. If you use suidmanager you can also use that to make sure man and mandb are not installed suid which protects you from this problem. This can be done with the following commands: suidregister /usr/lib/man-db/man root root 0755 suidregister /usr/lib/man-db/mandb root root 0755

Of course even when using suidmanager an upgrade is still strongly recommended.

See Also

http://www.debian.org/security/2001/dsa-056

Plugin Details

Severity: Low

ID: 14893

File Name: debian_DSA-056.nasl

Version: 1.19

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/29/2004

Updated: 1/4/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.2

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 1.2

Temporal Score: 0.9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:2.2, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:man-db

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 5/8/2001

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2001-1331

BID: 2720

DSA: 056