Ubuntu Security Notice USN-919-1
29th March, 2010
emacs22, emacs23 vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 9.10
- Ubuntu 9.04
- Ubuntu 8.10
- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
Software description
- emacs22
- emacs23
Details
Dan Rosenberg discovered that the email helper in Emacs did not correctly
check file permissions. A local attacker could perform a symlink race
to read or append to another user's mailbox if it was stored under a
group-writable group-"mail" directory.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:
- Ubuntu 9.10:
- emacs23-bin-common 23.1+1-4ubuntu3.2
- emacs22-bin-common 22.2-0ubuntu6.2
- Ubuntu 9.04:
- emacs22-bin-common 22.2-0ubuntu2.9.04.1
- Ubuntu 8.10:
- emacs22-bin-common 22.2-0ubuntu2.8.10.1
- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
- emacs22-bin-common 22.1-0ubuntu10.2
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.