RHSA-2010:0819: Moderate: pam security update

First published: Mon Nov 01 2010(Updated: )

Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) provide a system whereby<br>administrators can set up authentication policies without having to<br>recompile programs that handle authentication.<br>It was discovered that the pam_namespace module executed the external<br>script namespace.init with an unchanged environment inherited from an<br>application calling PAM. In cases where such an environment was untrusted<br>(for example, when pam_namespace was configured for setuid applications<br>such as su or sudo), a local, unprivileged user could possibly use this<br>flaw to escalate their privileges. (CVE-2010-3853)<br>It was discovered that the pam_mail module used root privileges while<br>accessing users' files. In certain configurations, a local, unprivileged<br>user could use this flaw to obtain limited information about files or<br>directories that they do not have access to. (CVE-2010-3435)<br>It was discovered that the pam_xauth module did not verify the return<br>values of the setuid() and setgid() system calls. A local, unprivileged<br>user could use this flaw to execute the xauth command with root privileges<br>and make it read an arbitrary input file. (CVE-2010-3316)<br>Red Hat would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for<br>reporting the CVE-2010-3435 issue.<br>All pam users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain<br>backported patches to correct these issues.<br>

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