Debian DSA-165-1 : postgresql - buffer overflows

high Nessus Plugin ID 15002

Synopsis

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

Description

Mordred Labs and others found several vulnerabilities in PostgreSQL, an object-relational SQL database. They are inherited from several buffer overflows and integer overflows. Specially crafted long date and time input, currency, repeat data and long timezone names could cause the PostgreSQL server to crash as well as specially crafted input data for lpad() and rpad(). More buffer/integer overflows were found in circle_poly(), path_encode() and path_addr().

Except for the last three, these problems are fixed in the upstream release 7.2.2 of PostgreSQL which is the recommended version to use.

Most of these problems do not exist in the version of PostgreSQL that Debian ships in the potato release since the corresponding functionality is not yet implemented. However, PostgreSQL 6.5.3 is quite old and may bear more risks than we are aware of, which may include further buffer overflows, and certainly include bugs that threaten the integrity of your data.

You are strongly advised not to use this release but to upgrade your system to Debian 3.0 (stable) including PostgreSQL release 7.2.1 instead, where many bugs have been fixed and new features introduced to increase compatibility with the SQL standards.

If you consider an upgrade, please make sure to dump the entire database system using the pg_dumpall utility. Please take into consideration that the newer PostgreSQL is more strict in its input handling. This means that tests like 'foo = NULL' which are not valid won't be accepted anymore. It also means that when using UNICODE encoding, ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-15 are no longer valid encodings to use when inserting data into the relation. In such a case you are advised to convert the dump in question usingrecode latin1..utf-16.

These problems have been fixed in version 7.2.1-2woody2 for the current stable distribution (woody) and in version 7.2.2-2 for the unstable distribution (sid). The old stable distribution (potato) is partially affected and we ship a fixed version 6.5.3-27.2 for it.

Solution

Upgrade the PostgreSQL packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 15002

File Name: debian_DSA-165.nasl

Version: 1.20

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Debian Local Security Checks

Published: 9/29/2004

Updated: 1/4/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.8

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:3.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:2.2, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:postgresql

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

Patch Publication Date: 9/12/2002

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/19/2002

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2002-0972, CVE-2002-1397, CVE-2002-1398, CVE-2002-1400, CVE-2002-1401, CVE-2002-1402

CWE: 119

DSA: 165

Detections

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