The SSL capability for Konqueror in KDE 3.0.2 and earlier does not verify the Basic Constraints for an intermediate CA-signed certificate, which allows remote attackers to spoof the certificates of trusted sites via a man-in-the-middle attack.

Due to a security engineering oversight, the SSL library from KDE, which Konqueror uses, doesn't check whether an intermediate certificate for a connection is signed by the certificate authority as safe for the purpose, but accepts it when it is signed. This makes it possible for anyone with a valid VeriSign SSL site certificate to forge any other VeriSign SSL site certificate, and abuse Konqueror users.

A local root exploit using artsd has been discovered which exploited an insecure use of a format string. The exploit wasn't working on a Debian system since artsd wasn't running setuid root. Neither artsd nor artswrapper need to be setuid root anymore since current computer systems are fast enough to handle the audio data in time.

These problems have been fixed in version 2.2.2-13.woody.2 for the current stable distribution (woody). The old stable distribution (potato) is not affected, since it doesn't contain KDE packages. The unstable distribution (sid) is not yet fixed, but new packages are expected in the future, the fixed version will be version 2.2.2-14 or higher.

A vulnerability was discovered in KDE's SSL implementation in that it does not check the basic constraints on a certificate and as a result may accept certificates as valid that were signed by an issuer who is not authorized to do so. This can lead to Konqueror and other SSL- enabled KDE software falling victim to a man-in-the-middle attack without being aware of the invalid certificate. This will trick users into thinking they are on a secure connection with a valid site when in fact the site is different from that which they intended to connect to.

This is fixed in KDE 3.0.3, and the KDE team provided a patch for KDE 2.2.2. This patch has been applied to the following packages.

After upgrading kdelibs, you must restart KDE in order for the fix to work.

A number of vulnerabilities have been found that affect various versions of KDE. This errata provides updates for these issues.

KDE is a graphical desktop environment for workstations. A number of vulnerabilities have been found in various versions of KDE.

The SSL capability for Konqueror in KDE 3.0.2 and earlier does not verify the Basic Constraints for an intermediate CA-signed certificate, which allows remote attackers to spoof the certificates of trusted sites via a man-in-the-middle attack. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the name CVE-2002-0970 to this issue.

The cross-site scripting protection for Konqueror in KDE 2.2.2 and 3.0 through 3.0.3 does not properly initialize the domains on sub-frames and sub-iframes, which can allow remote attackers to execute scripts and steal cookies from subframes that are in other domains.
(CVE-2002-1151)

Multiple buffer overflows exist in the KDE LAN browsing implementation; the reslisa daemon contains a buffer overflow vulnerability which could be exploited if the reslisa binary is SUID root. Additionally, the lisa daemon contains a vulnerability which potentially enables any local user, as well any any remote attacker on the LAN who is able to gain control of the LISa port (7741 by default), to obtain root privileges. In Red Hat Linux reslisa is not SUID root and lisa services are not automatically started.
(CVE-2002-1247, CVE-2002-1306)

Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 provides KDE version 2.2.2 and is therefore vulnerable to these issues. This errata provides new kdelibs and kdenetworks packages which contain patches to correct these issues.

Please note that there is are two additional vulnerabilities that affect KDE 2.x which are not fixed by this errata. A vulnerability in the rlogin KIO subsystem (rlogin.protocol) of KDE 2.x 2.1 and later, and KDE 3.x 3.0.4 and earlier, allows local and remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a carefully crafted URL. (CVE-2002-1281). A similar vulnerability affects the telnet KIO subsystem (telnet.protocol) of KDE 2.x 2.1 and later. (CVE-2002-1282)

At this time, Red Hat recommends disabling both the rlogin and telnet KIO protocols as a workaround. To disable both protocols, execute these commands while logged in as root :

rm /usr/share/services/rlogin.protocol rm /usr/share/services/telnet.protocol

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
14992	Debian DSA-155-1 : kdelibs - privacy escalation with Konqueror	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
13959	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : kdelibs (MDKSA-2002:058)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	high
12328	RHEL 2.1 : kdelibs (RHSA-2002:221)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high

Detections

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CVE-2002-0970

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