Synopsis
The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates for gzip.
Description
The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2005:357 advisory.
The gzip package contains the GNU gzip data compression program.
A bug was found in the way zgrep processes file names. If a user can be tricked into running zgrep on a file with a carefully crafted file name, arbitrary commands could be executed as the user running zgrep. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2005-0758 to this issue.
A bug was found in the way gunzip modifies permissions of files being decompressed. A local attacker with write permissions in the directory in which a victim is decompressing a file could remove the file being written and replace it with a hard link to a different file owned by the victim.
gunzip then gives the linked file the permissions of the uncompressed file.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2005-0988 to this issue.
A directory traversal bug was found in the way gunzip processes the -N flag. If a victim decompresses a file with the -N flag, gunzip fails to sanitize the path which could result in a file owned by the victim being overwritten. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2005-1228 to this issue.
Users of gzip should upgrade to this updated package, which contains backported patches to correct these issues.
Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.
Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.
Solution
Update the RHEL gzip package based on the guidance in RHSA-2005:357.
Plugin Details
File Name: redhat-RHSA-2005-357.nasl
Agent: unix
Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus
Risk Information
Vendor
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Vulnerability Information
CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gzip, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:3, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:4
Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu
Patch Publication Date: 6/13/2005
Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/2/2005