Race condition in daemon/slave.c in gdm before 2.14.1 allows local users to gain privileges via a symlink attack when gdm performs chown and chgrp operations on the .ICEauthority file.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2007:0286 :

An updated gdm package that fixes a security issue and a bug is now available.

This update has been rated as having low security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Gdm (the GNOME Display Manager) is a highly configurable reimplementation of xdm, the X Display Manager. Gdm allows you to log into your system with the X Window System running and supports running several different X sessions on your local machine at the same time.

Marcus Meissner discovered a race condition issue in the way Gdm modifies the permissions on the .ICEauthority file. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain privileges. Due to the nature of the flaw, however, a successful exploitation was unlikely. (CVE-2006-1057)

This erratum also includes a bug fix to correct the pam configuration for the audit system.

All users of gdm should upgrade to this updated package, which contains backported patches to resolve these issues.

Marcus Meissner discovered a race condition issue in the way Gdm modifies the permissions on the .ICEauthority file. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain privileges. Due to the nature of the flaw, however, a successful exploitation was unlikely. (CVE-2006-1057)

An updated gdm package that fixes a security issue and a bug is now available.

This update has been rated as having low security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Gdm (the GNOME Display Manager) is a highly configurable reimplementation of xdm, the X Display Manager. Gdm allows you to log into your system with the X Window System running and supports running several different X sessions on your local machine at the same time.

Marcus Meissner discovered a race condition issue in the way Gdm modifies the permissions on the .ICEauthority file. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain privileges. Due to the nature of the flaw, however, a successful exploitation was unlikely. (CVE-2006-1057)

This erratum also includes a bug fix to correct the pam configuration for the audit system.

All users of gdm should upgrade to this updated package, which contains backported patches to resolve these issues.

A vulnerability has been identified in gdm, a display manager for X, that could allow a local attacker to gain elevated privileges by exploiting a race condition in the handling of the .ICEauthority file.

Marcus Meissner discovered a race condition in gdm's handling of the ~/.ICEauthority file permissions. A local attacker could exploit this to become the owner of an arbitrary file in the system. When getting control over automatically executed scripts (like cron jobs), the attacker could eventually leverage this flaw to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

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

A race condition in daemon/slave.c in gdm before 2.14.1 allows local users to gain privileges via a symlink attack when gdm performs chown and chgrp operations on the .ICEauthority file.

Packages have been patched to correct this issue.

(Notes taken from upstream release mail)

  - The sockets connection between the slaves and the GDM     daemon is now better managed to better ensure that     sockets are never left open. (Brian Cameron)

  - Corrected bug that causes a core dump when you click on     gdmgreeter fields that have an id. (Brian Cameron)

  - Add new GdmXserverTimeout configuration setting so that     the length of time GDM waits for the Xserver to start     can be tuned, so GDM better works with Xservers that     require more than 10 seconds to start. (Emilie)

  - The happygnome and happygnome-list gdmgreeter themes now     use the official logo. (Brian Cameron)

  - Now GDM configure supports --with-sysconfsubdir so that     GDM's configuration directory can be configured to not     have '/gdm' appended to the end.

  - Fix for ensuring .ICEauthority file has proper     ownership/permissions. Addresses CVE-2006-1057. (Hans     Petter Jansson)

  - Fix 'Show Actions Menu' section in gdmsetup so it     appears when both 'Plain' and 'Themed' style is chosen.
    (Brian Cameron, Dennis Cranston)

  - Now use LINGUAS procedure for defining languages.
    (Michiel Sikkes)

  - Now Xsession script uses '$@' instead of '$1' so it is     possible to pass arguments with the command to run.
    (Brian Cameron)

  - Add Trusted Solraris support. (Niall Power)

  - One line fix to Solaris auditing logic that fixes a bug     causing authentication to fail when auditing is turned     on. (Brian Cameron)

  - Fixes to compile with C99 and fixes to compile under     NetBSD. Remove EXPANDED_* variables from the configure.
    (Julio M. Merino Vidal)

  - Translation updates (Aygimantas Beruaka, Benoat Dejean,     Laurent Dhima, Maxim Dziumanenko, Alessio Frusciante,     Rhys Jones, Raphael Higino, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan,     Gabor Kelmen, Priit Laes, Jordi Mallach, Kjartan Maraas,     Daniel Nylander, Kostas Papdimas, Guilherme de S.
    Pastore, Ankit Patel, Ignacio Casal Quinteiro, Hendrik     Richter, Jens Seidel, Francisco Javier F. Serrador,     Alexander Shopov, Clytie Siddall, Ilkka Tuohela, Vincent     van Adrighem, Tommi Vainikaninen)

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

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
67483	Oracle Linux 4 : gdm (ELSA-2007-0286)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	low
60166	Scientific Linux Security Update : gdm on SL4 i386/x86_64	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	low
25145	RHEL 4 : gdm (RHSA-2007:0286)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	low
22582	Debian DSA-1040-1 : gdm - programming error	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	low
21372	Ubuntu 5.04 / 5.10 : gdm vulnerabilitiy (USN-278-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	low
21358	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : gdm (MDKSA-2006:083)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	low
21249	Fedora Core 5 : gdm-2.14.1-1.fc5.2 (2006-338)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	low

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2006-1057

high

Tenable Plugins

low

low

low

low

low

low

low