SuSE 11.1 Security Update : PostgreSQL (SAT Patch Number 6697)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 64216

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Synopsis

The remote SuSE 11 host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

This update provides PostgreSQL 8.3.20. As part of this update, the packaging scheme has been changed to accomodate an optional parallel installation of newer PostgreSQL versions.

The changes in 8.3.20 are :

- Prevent access to external files/URLs via XML entity references. xml_parse() would attempt to fetch external files or URLs as needed to resolve DTD and entity references in an XML value, thus allowing unprivileged database users to attempt to fetch data with the privileges of the database server. (CVE-2012-3489, bnc#776524)

- Prevent access to external files/URLs via 'contrib/xml2''s xslt_process(). libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that through proper use of libxslt's security options. (CVE-2012-3488, bnc#776523).
Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets from external files/URLs.

- Fix incorrect password transformation in contrib/pgcrypto's DES crypt() function. If a password string contained the byte value 0x80, the remainder of the password was ignored, causing the password to be much weaker than it appeared. With this fix, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash. Any stored password values that are affected by this bug will thus no longer match, so the stored values may need to be updated. (CVE-2012-2143)

- Ignore SECURITY DEFINER and SET attributes for a procedural language's call handler. Applying such attributes to a call handler could crash the server.
(CVE-2012-2655)

- Allow numeric timezone offsets in timestamp input to be up to 16 hours away from UTC. Some historical time zones have offsets larger than 15 hours, the previous limit.
This could result in dumped data values being rejected during reload.

- Fix timestamp conversion to cope when the given time is exactly the last DST transition time for the current timezone. This oversight has been there a long time, but was not noticed previously because most DST-using zones are presumed to have an indefinite sequence of future DST transitions.

- Fix text to name and char to name casts to perform string truncation correctly in multibyte encodings.

- Fix memory copying bug in to_tsquery().

- Fix slow session startup when pg_attribute is very large. If pg_attribute exceeds one-fourth of shared_buffers, cache rebuilding code that is sometimes needed during session start would trigger the synchronized-scan logic, causing it to take many times longer than normal. The problem was particularly acute if many new sessions were starting at once.

- Ensure sequential scans check for query cancel reasonably often. A scan encountering many consecutive pages that contain no live tuples would not respond to interrupts meanwhile.

- Show whole-row variables safely when printing views or rules. Corner cases involving ambiguous names (that is, the name could be either a table or column name of the query) were printed in an ambiguous way, risking that the view or rule would be interpreted differently after dump and reload. Avoid the ambiguous case by attaching a no-op cast.

- Ensure autovacuum worker processes perform stack depth checking properly. Previously, infinite recursion in a function invoked by auto-ANALYZE could crash worker processes.

- Fix logging collector to not lose log coherency under high load. The collector previously could fail to reassemble large messages if it got too busy.

- Fix logging collector to ensure it will restart file rotation after receiving SIGHUP.

- Fix PL/pgSQL's GET DIAGNOSTICS command when the target is the function's first variable.

- Fix several performance problems in pg_dump when the database contains many objects. pg_dump could get very slow if the database contained many schemas, or if many objects are in dependency loops, or if there are many owned sequences.

- Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_exec() to not leak temporary database connections upon error.

Solution

Apply SAT patch number 6697.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 64216

File Name: suse_11_postgresql-120820.nasl

Version: 1.8

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: SuSE Local Security Checks

Published: 1/25/2013

Updated: 1/19/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.5

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.9

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:11:postgresql-contrib, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:11:postgresql-docs, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:11:postgresql-server, cpe:/o:novell:suse_linux:11, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:11:postgresql, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:11:postgresql-init

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

Patch Publication Date: 8/20/2012

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-2143, CVE-2012-2655, CVE-2012-3488, CVE-2012-3489

Detections

Analytics