Ubuntu Security Notice USN-290-1
8th June, 2006
awstats vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
- Ubuntu 5.10
- Ubuntu 5.04
Details
Hendrik Weimer discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in
awstats. By supplying the 'configdir' CGI parameter and setting it to
an attacker-controlled directory (such as an FTP account, /tmp, or
similar), an attacker could execute arbitrary shell commands with the
privileges of the web server (user 'www-data').
This update disables the 'configdir' parameter by default. If all
local user accounts can be trusted, it can be reenabled by running
awstats with the AWSTATS_ENABLE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable set to
a nonempty value.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:
- Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
- awstats 6.5-1ubuntu1.1
- Ubuntu 5.10:
- awstats 6.4-1ubuntu1.2
- Ubuntu 5.04:
- awstats 6.3-1ubuntu0.3
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.