Originally posted by: sharkeeper
Plus Windows XP can be owned so fast and so hard that it would spin your head for a week. This is no joke. Look at the security lists if you don't believe me.
That's funny because I get just as many emails from Red Hat Network as I do from Microsoft like this one:
RHN Errata Alert: Updated vte packages fix gnome-terminal vulnerability
Red Hat Network has determined that the following advisory is applicable to one or more of the systems you have registered:
Complete information about this errata can be found at the following location:
https://rhn.redhat.com/network/errata/errata_details.pxt?eid=1498
Security Advisory - RHSA-2003:053-10
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Summary:
Updated vte packages fix gnome-terminal vulnerability
Updated vte packages that fix a vulnerability in gnome-terminal are available for Red Hat Linux 8.0.
Description:
VTE is an terminal emulator widget used by software such as gnome-terminal.
One feature that most terminal emulators support is the ability for the shell to set the title of the window using an escape sequence.
Certain xterm variants also provide an escape sequence for reporting the current window title. This essentially takes the current title and places it directly on the command line. This feature could be potentially exploited if an attacker can cause carefully crafted escape sequences to be displayed on a vulnerable terminal emulator used by their victim.
Since it is not possible to embed a carriage return into the window title itself, the attacker would have to convince the victim to hit enter for it to process the title as a command, although the attacker can perform a number of actions to increase the likelyhood of this happening.
VTE is vulnerable to this issue and is used as the default terminal emulator for versions of gnome-terminal shipped with Red Hat Linux 8.0.
Previous releases of Red Hat Linux do not contain a vulnerable version of gnome-terminal.
Users of gnome-terminal on Red Hat Linux 8.0 are advised to upgrade to these errata packages, which contain a patch to disable the title reporting functionality.
Red Hat would like to thank H D Moore for bringing these issues to our attention.
Please note; because this update contains a fixed shared library used by gnome-terminal, the vulnerable code will continue to be in use as long as any gnome-terminal session remains active. The easiest way to ensure that the vulnerable code is no longer in use is to log out of your window manager. Alternatively all running gnome-terminal sessions can be closed.
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Taking Action
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You may address the issues outlined in this advisory in two ways:
- select your server name by clicking on its name from the list
available at the following location, and then schedule an
errata update for it:
https://rhn.redhat.com/network/systemlist/system_list.pxt
- run the Update Agent on each affected server.
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Changing Notification Preferences
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To enable/disable your Errata Alert preferences globally please log in to RHN and navigate from "Your RHN" / "Your Account" to the "Preferences" tab.
URL:
https://rhn.redhat.com/network/my_account/my_prefs.pxt
You can also enable/disable notification on a per system basis by selecting an individual system from the "Systems List". From the individual system view click the "Details" tab.
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Affected Systems
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According to our records, this errata may apply to one or more of the
systems that you've profiled with Red Hat Network. To see precisely which
systems are affected, please go to:
https://rhn.redhat.com/network/errata/systems_affected.pxt?eid=1498
The Red Hat Network Team
This message is being sent by Red Hat Network Alert to:
RHN user login: sharkeeper
Email address on file: <david.klepes@shuttleteam.com>
If you lost your RHN password, you can use the information above to retrieve it by email from the following address:
https://rhn.redhat.com/forgot_password.pxt
To cancel these notices, go to:
https://rhn.redhat.com/oo.pxt?uid=1747094&oid=2306196
Summary: EVERY OS has newfound vulnerabilities. Protection against these is only as good as the person keeping things up to date. Slammer proved that.
Cheers!