USN-301-1: kdm vulnerability

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-301-1

14th June, 2006

kdebase vulnerability

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

  • Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
  • Ubuntu 5.10
  • Ubuntu 5.04

Details

Ludwig Nussel discovered that kdm managed the ~/.dmrc file in an
insecure way. By performing a symlink attack, a local user could
exploit this to read arbitrary files on the system, like private files
of other users, /etc/shadow, and similarly sensitive data.

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
kdm 4:3.5.2-0ubuntu27
Ubuntu 5.10:
kdm 4:3.4.3-0ubuntu7
Ubuntu 5.04:
kdm 4:3.4.0-0ubuntu18.3

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.

References

CVE-2006-2449