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GNU Texinfo Multiple Vulnerabilities Advisory Available in Danish  Advisory Available in German 

Secunia Advisory: SA16816  
Release Date: 2005-09-15
Last Update: 2006-11-09

Critical:
Moderately critical
Impact: Privilege escalation
System access
Where: From remote
Solution Status: Unpatched

Software:GNU Texinfo 4.x

CVE reference:CVE-2005-3011 (Secunia mirror)
CVE-2006-4810 (Secunia mirror)

This advisory is currently marked as unpatched!
- Companies can be alerted when a patch is released!


Description:
Some vulnerabilities have been reported in GNU texinfo, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to perform certain actions on a vulnerable system with escalated privileges, and by malicious people to potentially compromise a vulnerable system.

1) The "sort_offline()" function in textindex.c creates temporary files insecurely using predictable file names. This can be exploited via symlink attacks to create or overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user running the affected application.

Successful exploitation requires that texindex is used with an input file that is 500,000 bytes or larger.

2) A boundary error exists within the "readline()" function in texindex.c. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow by e.g. tricking a user into opening a specially crafted Texinfo file.

Successful exploitation may allow the execution of arbitrary code, but requires that an input file which is 500,000 bytes or larger is used.

Solution:
Grant only trusted users access to affected systems and do not open untrusted Texinfo files.

Provided and/or discovered by:
1) Frank Lichtenheld
2) Miloslav Trmac

Changelog:
2005-09-23: Added CVE reference.
2006-11-09: Added "readline()" vulnerability.

Original Advisory:
Debian:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=328365

Red Hat:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=211484



Please note: The information that this Secunia Advisory is based on comes from a third party unless stated otherwise.

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