RHEL 5 : autofs (RHSA-2007:1176)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 29777

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for autofs.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has a package installed that is affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2007:1176 advisory.

The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon, which automatically mounts file systems when you use them, and unmounts them when you are not using them. This can include network file systems and CD-ROMs.

There was a security issue with the default configuration of autofs version 5, whereby the entry for the -hosts map did not specify the nodev mount option. A local user with control of a remote NFS server could create special device files on the remote file system, that if mounted using the default -hosts map, could allow the user to access important system devices. (CVE-2007-6285)

This issue is similar to CVE-2007-5964, which fixed a missing nosuid mount option in autofs. Both the nodev and nosuid options should be enabled to prevent a possible compromise of machine integrity.

Due to the fact that autofs always mounted -hosts map entries dev by default, autofs has now been altered to always use the nodev option when mounting from the default -hosts map. The dev option must be explicitly given in the master map entry to revert to the old behavior. This change affects only the -hosts map which corresponds to the /net entry in the default configuration.

All autofs users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve this issue.

Red Hat would like to thank Tim Baum for reporting this issue.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL autofs package based on the guidance in RHSA-2007:1176.

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 29777

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2007-1176.nasl

Version: 1.26

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 12/24/2007

Updated: 11/4/2024

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.2

Temporal Score: 4.6

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2007-6285

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:autofs, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/20/2007

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/20/2007

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2007-6285

BID: 26970

RHSA: 2007:1176

Detections

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