USN-554-1: teTeX and TeX Live vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-554-1

6th December, 2007

tetex-bin, texlive-bin vulnerabilities

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

  • Ubuntu 7.10
  • Ubuntu 7.04
  • Ubuntu 6.10
  • Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Software description

  • tetex-bin
  • texlive-bin

Details

Bastien Roucaries discovered that dvips as included in tetex-bin
and texlive-bin did not properly perform bounds checking. If a
user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially
crafted dvi file, dvips could be made to crash and execute code as
the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5935)

Joachim Schrod discovered that the dviljk utilities created
temporary files in an insecure way. Local users could exploit a
race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of
the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5936)

Joachim Schrod discovered that the dviljk utilities did not
perform bounds checking in many instances. If a user or automated
system were tricked into processing a specially crafted dvi file,
the dviljk utilities could be made to crash and execute code as
the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5937)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 7.10:
texlive-extra-utils 2007-12ubuntu3.1
Ubuntu 7.04:
tetex-bin 3.0-27ubuntu1.2
Ubuntu 6.10:
tetex-bin 3.0-17ubuntu2.1
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
tetex-bin 3.0-13ubuntu6.1

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-2007-5935, CVE-2007-5936, CVE-2007-5937