[gentoo-announce] [ GLSA 200902-06 ] GNU Emacs, XEmacs: Multiple vulnerabilities

[news 28]

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Gentoo Linux Security Advisory GLSA 200902-06

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http://security.gentoo.org/

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Severity: Normal

Title: GNU Emacs, XEmacs: Multiple vulnerabilities

Date: February 23, 2009

Bugs: #221197, #236498

ID: 200902-06

 

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Synopsis

========

 

Two vulnerabilities were found in GNU Emacs, possibly leading to

user-assisted execution of arbitrary code. One also affects edit-utils

in XEmacs.

 

Background

==========

 

GNU Emacs and XEmacs are highly extensible and customizable text

editors. edit-utils are miscellaneous extensions to XEmacs.

 

Affected packages

=================

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Package / Vulnerable / Unaffected

-------------------------------------------------------------------

1 app-editors/emacs < 22.2-r3 >= 22.2-r3

*>= 21.4-r17

< 19

2 app-xemacs/edit-utils < 2.39 >= 2.39

-------------------------------------------------------------------

2 affected packages on all of their supported architectures.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Description

===========

 

Morten Welinder reports about GNU Emacs and edit-utils in XEmacs: By

shipping a .flc accompanying a source file (.c for example) and setting

font-lock-support-mode to fast-lock-mode in the source file through

local variables, any Lisp code in the .flc file is executed without

warning (CVE-2008-2142).

 

Romain Francoise reported a security risk in a feature of GNU Emacs

related to interacting with Python. The vulnerability arises because

Python, by default, prepends the current directory to the module search

path, allowing for arbitrary code execution when launched from a

specially crafted directory (CVE-2008-3949).

 

Impact

======

 

Remote attackers could entice a user to open a specially crafted file

in GNU Emacs, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary Emacs Lisp

code or arbitrary Python code with the privileges of the user running

GNU Emacs or XEmacs.

 

Workaround

==========

 

There is no known workaround at this time.

 

Resolution

==========

 

All GNU Emacs users should upgrade to the latest version:

 

# emerge --sync

# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-editors/emacs-22.2-r3"

 

All edit-utils users should upgrade to the latest version:

 

# emerge --sync

# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-xemacs/edit-utils-2.39"

 

References

==========

 

[ 1 ] CVE-2008-2142

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2142

[ 2 ] CVE-2008-3949

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-3949

 

Availability

============

 

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at

the Gentoo Security Website:

 

http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200902-06.xml

 

Concerns?

=========

 

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the

confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost

importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to

security ( -at -) gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at

http://bugs.gentoo.org.

 

License

=======

 

Copyright 2009 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text

belongs to its owner(s).

 

The contents of this document are licensed under the

Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

 

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5