Debian DLA-565-1 : perl security update

high Nessus Plugin ID 92613

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Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security update.

Description

Multiple vulnerabilities were discovered in the implementation of the Perl programming language. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

CVE-2016-1238

John Lightsey and Todd Rinaldo reported that the opportunistic loading of optional modules can make many programs unintentionally load code from the current working directory (which might be changed to another directory without the user realising) and potentially leading to privilege escalation, as demonstrated in Debian with certain combinations of installed packages.

The problem relates to Perl loading modules from the includes directory array ('@INC') in which the last element is the current directory ('.'). That means that, when 'perl' wants to load a module (during first compilation or during lazy loading of a module in run- time), perl will look for the module in the current directory at the end, since '.' is the last include directory in its array of include directories to seek. The issue is with requiring libraries that are in '.' but are not otherwise installed.

With this update several modules which are known to be vulnerable are updated to not load modules from current directory.

Additionally the update allows configurable removal of '.' from @INC in /etc/perl/sitecustomize.pl for a transitional period. It is recommended to enable this setting if the possible breakage for a specific site has been evaluated.
Problems in packages provided in Debian resulting from the switch to the removal of '.' from @INC should be reported to the Perl maintainers at [email protected] .

CVE-2016-6185

It was discovered that XSLoader, a core module from Perl to dynamically load C libraries into Perl code, could load shared library from incorrect location. XSLoader uses caller() information to locate the .so file to load. This can be incorrect if XSLoader::load() is called in a string eval. An attacker can take advantage of this flaw to execute arbitrary code.

For Debian 7 'Wheezy', these problems have been fixed in version 5.14.2-21+deb7u4.

We recommend that you upgrade your perl packages.

NOTE: Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the DLA security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Solution

Upgrade the affected packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 92613

File Name: debian_DLA-565.nasl

Version: 2.7

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Debian Local Security Checks

Published: 7/29/2016

Updated: 1/30/2026

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 5.6

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-1238

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 7

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

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-6185

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:perl-doc, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:libperl-dev, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:7.0, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:perl-base, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:libcgi-fast-perl, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:perl-modules, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:perl, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:perl-debug, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:libperl5.14

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

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 7/28/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-1238, CVE-2016-6185

Detections

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