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RHEL 5 : gdm (RHSA-2013:1213)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 69795

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Synopsis

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

Description

Updated gdm and initscripts packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

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

A race condition was found in the way GDM handled the X server sockets directory located in the system temporary directory. An unprivileged user could use this flaw to perform a symbolic link attack, giving them write access to any file, allowing them to escalate their privileges to root. (CVE-2013-4169)

Note that this erratum includes an updated initscripts package. To fix CVE-2013-4169, the vulnerable code was removed from GDM and the initscripts package was modified to create the affected directory safely during the system boot process. Therefore, this update will appear on all systems, however systems without GDM installed are not affected by this flaw.

Red Hat would like to thank the researcher with the nickname vladz for reporting this issue.

All users should upgrade to these updated packages, which correct this issue. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013:1213

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2013-4169

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 69795

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2013-1213.nasl

Version: 1.15

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/6/2013

Updated: 1/14/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5.9, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:initscripts, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gdm-docs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:initscripts-debuginfo

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

Patch Publication Date: 9/5/2013

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2013-4169

RHSA: 2013:1213