RHEL 6 : gdm (RHSA-2011:0395)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 53207

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Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2011:0395 advisory.

The GNOME Display Manager (GDM) provides the graphical login screen, shown shortly after boot up, log out, and when user-switching.

A race condition flaw was found in the way GDM handled the cache directories used to store users' dmrc and face icon files. A local attacker could use this flaw to trick GDM into changing the ownership of an arbitrary file via a symbolic link attack, allowing them to escalate their privileges. (CVE-2011-0727)

Red Hat would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for reporting this issue.

All users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue. GDM must be restarted for this update to take effect. Rebooting achieves this, but changing the runlevel from 5 to 3 and back to 5 also restarts GDM.

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 gdm package based on the guidance in RHSA-2011:0395.

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 53207

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2011-0395.nasl

Version: 1.20

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 3/29/2011

Updated: 4/14/2025

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: Moderate

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Temporal Score: 5.1

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2011-0727

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:gdm, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-libs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-user-switch-applet, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-plugin-smartcard, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-plugin-fingerprint

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: 3/28/2011

Vulnerability Publication Date: 3/31/2011

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2011-0727

BID: 47063

RHSA: 2011:0395

Detections

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