RHEL 4 : pam (RHSA-2007:0737)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 28239

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

Updated pam packages that fix two security flaws, resolve two bugs, and add an enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

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

Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) provide a system whereby administrators can set up authentication policies without having to recompile programs that handle authentication.

A flaw was found in the way pam_console set console device permissions. It was possible for various console devices to retain ownership of the console user after logging out, possibly leaking information to another local user. (CVE-2007-1716)

A flaw was found in the way the PAM library wrote account names to the audit subsystem. An attacker could inject strings containing parts of audit messages, which could possibly mislead or confuse audit log parsing tools. (CVE-2007-3102)

As well, these updated packages fix the following bugs :

* the pam_xauth module, which is used for copying the X11 authentication cookie, did not reset the 'XAUTHORITY' variable in certain circumstances, causing unnecessary delays when using su command.

* when calculating password similarity, pam_cracklib disregarded changes to the last character in passwords when 'difok=x' (where 'x' is the number of characters required to change) was configured in '/etc/pam.d/system-auth'. This resulted in password changes that should have been successful to fail with the following error :

BAD PASSWORD: is too similar to the old one

This issue has been resolved in these updated packages.

* the pam_limits module, which provides setting up system resources limits for user sessions, reset the nice priority of the user session to '0' if it was not configured otherwise in the '/etc/security/limits.conf' configuration file.

These updated packages add the following enhancement :

* a new PAM module, pam_tally2, which allows accounts to be locked after a maximum number of failed log in attempts.

All users of PAM should upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues and add this enhancement.

Solution

Update the affected pam and / or pam-devel packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 28239

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2007-0737.nasl

Version: 1.22

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 11/16/2007

Updated: 1/14/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.5

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.3

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pam, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pam-devel, 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: 11/15/2007

Vulnerability Publication Date: 3/27/2007

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2007-1716, CVE-2007-3102

RHSA: 2007:0737

Detections

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