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Debian DSA-059-1 : man-db - symlink attack

low Nessus Plugin ID 14896

Synopsis

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

Description

Luki R. reported a bug in man-db: it did not handle nested calls ofdrop_effective_privs() and regain_effective_privs() correctly which would cause it to regain privileges too early. This could be abused to make man create files as user man.

Solution

This has been fixed in version 2.3.16-4, 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-059

Plugin Details

Severity: Low

ID: 14896

File Name: debian_DSA-059.nasl

Version: 1.20

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/29/2004

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.3

Percentile: 53.04

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 Available: true

Exploit Ease: No exploit is required

Patch Publication Date: 6/12/2001

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2001-1331

BID: 2720, 2815

DSA: 059