Oracle Linux 6 : pam (ELSA-2010-0891)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 68144

Synopsis

The remote Oracle Linux host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2010:0891 :

Updated pam packages that fix three security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) provide a system whereby administrators can set up authentication policies without having to recompile programs that handle authentication.

It was discovered that the pam_namespace module executed the external script namespace.init with an unchanged environment inherited from an application calling PAM. In cases where such an environment was untrusted (for example, when pam_namespace was configured for setuid applications such as su or sudo), a local, unprivileged user could possibly use this flaw to escalate their privileges. (CVE-2010-3853)

It was discovered that the pam_env and pam_mail modules used root privileges while accessing user's files. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to obtain information, from the lines that have the KEY=VALUE format expected by pam_env, from an arbitrary file.
Also, in certain configurations, a local, unprivileged user using a service for which the pam_mail module was configured for, could use this flaw to obtain limited information about files or directories that they do not have access to. (CVE-2010-3435)

Note: As part of the fix for CVE-2010-3435, this update changes the default value of pam_env's configuration option user_readenv to 0, causing the module to not read user's ~/.pam_environment configuration file by default, as reading it may introduce unexpected changes to the environment of the service using PAM, or PAM modules consulted after pam_env.

It was discovered that the pam_xauth module did not verify the return values of the setuid() and setgid() system calls. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to execute the xauth command with root privileges and make it read an arbitrary input file.
(CVE-2010-3316)

Red Hat would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for reporting the CVE-2010-3435 issue.

All pam users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

Solution

Update the affected pam and / or pam-devel packages.

See Also

https://linux.oracle.com/errata/ELSA-2010-0891.html

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 68144

File Name: oraclelinux_ELSA-2010-0891.nasl

Version: 1.10

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 7/12/2013

Updated: 9/7/2023

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 5.3

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2010-4708

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 4.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2010-3435

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:oracle:linux:pam, p-cpe:/a:oracle:linux:pam-devel, cpe:/o:oracle:linux:6

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/OracleLinux

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 2/16/2011

Vulnerability Publication Date: 1/24/2011

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2010-3316, CVE-2010-3435, CVE-2010-3853, CVE-2010-4707, CVE-2010-4708

BID: 42472, 43487, 44590

RHSA: 2010:0891