RHEL 5 / 6 : pidgin (RHSA-2014:0139)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 72364

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Synopsis

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

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 / 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2014:0139 advisory.

Pidgin is an instant messaging program which can log in to multiple accounts on multiple instant messaging networks simultaneously.

A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way Pidgin processed certain HTTP responses. A malicious server could send a specially crafted HTTP response, causing Pidgin to crash or potentially execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Pidgin. (CVE-2013-6485)

Multiple heap-based buffer overflow flaws were found in several protocol plug-ins in Pidgin (Gadu-Gadu, MXit, SIMPLE). A malicious server could send a specially crafted message, causing Pidgin to crash or potentially execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Pidgin.
(CVE-2013-6487, CVE-2013-6489, CVE-2013-6490)

Multiple denial of service flaws were found in several protocol plug-ins in Pidgin (Yahoo!, XMPP, MSN, stun, IRC). A remote attacker could use these flaws to crash Pidgin by sending a specially crafted message.
(CVE-2012-6152, CVE-2013-6477, CVE-2013-6481, CVE-2013-6482, CVE-2013-6484, CVE-2014-0020)

It was found that the Pidgin XMPP protocol plug-in did not verify the origin of iq replies. A remote attacker could use this flaw to spoof an iq reply, which could lead to injection of fake data or cause Pidgin to crash via a NULL pointer dereference. (CVE-2013-6483)

A flaw was found in the way Pidgin parsed certain HTTP response headers.
A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash Pidgin via a specially crafted HTTP response header. (CVE-2013-6479)

It was found that Pidgin crashed when a mouse pointer was hovered over a long URL. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash Pidgin by sending a message containing a long URL string. (CVE-2013-6478)

Red Hat would like to thank the Pidgin project for reporting these issues.
Upstream acknowledges Thijs Alkemade, Robert Vehse, Jaime Breva Ribes, Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor Project, Daniel Atallah, Fabian Yamaguchi and Christian Wressnegger of the University of Goettingen, Matt Jones of Volvent, and Yves Younan, Ryan Pentney, and Pawel Janic of Sourcefire VRT as the original reporters of these issues.

All pidgin users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. Pidgin must be restarted for this update to take effect.

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

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

Solution

Update the RHEL pidgin package based on the guidance in RHSA-2014:0139.

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 72364

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2014-0139.nasl

Version: 1.17

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 2/6/2014

Updated: 3/20/2025

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: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 7.4

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2013-6490

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2013-6485

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:finch, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libpurple-tcl, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pidgin-docs, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pidgin, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libpurple-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pidgin-perl, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:finch-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:pidgin-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libpurple, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libpurple-perl

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: 2/5/2014

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/6/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-6152, CVE-2013-6477, CVE-2013-6478, CVE-2013-6479, CVE-2013-6481, CVE-2013-6482, CVE-2013-6483, CVE-2013-6484, CVE-2013-6485, CVE-2013-6487, CVE-2013-6489, CVE-2013-6490, CVE-2014-0020

BID: 65188, 65192, 65195, 65243

CWE: 122, 125, 172, 190, 290, 400, 476, 628

RHSA: 2014:0139

Detections

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