RHSA-2011:0492: Moderate: python security update

First published: Thu May 05 2011(Updated: )

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming<br>language.<br>A flaw was found in the Python urllib and urllib2 libraries where they<br>would not differentiate between different target URLs when handling<br>automatic redirects. This caused Python applications using these modules to<br>follow any new URL that they understood, including the "file://" URL type.<br>This could allow a remote server to force a local Python application to<br>read a local file instead of the remote one, possibly exposing local files<br>that were not meant to be exposed. (CVE-2011-1521)<br>A race condition was found in the way the Python smtpd module handled new<br>connections. A remote user could use this flaw to cause a Python script<br>using the smtpd module to terminate. (CVE-2010-3493)<br>An information disclosure flaw was found in the way the Python<br>CGIHTTPServer module processed certain HTTP GET requests. A remote attacker<br>could use a specially-crafted request to obtain the CGI script's source<br>code. (CVE-2011-1015)<br>A buffer over-read flaw was found in the way the Python Expat parser<br>handled malformed UTF-8 sequences when processing XML files. A<br>specially-crafted XML file could cause Python applications using the Python<br>Expat parser to crash while parsing the file. (CVE-2009-3720)<br>This update makes Python use the system Expat library rather than its own<br>internal copy; therefore, users must have the version of Expat shipped with<br>RHSA-2009:1625 installed, or a later version, to resolve the CVE-2009-3720<br>issue.<br>All Python users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain<br>backported patches to correct these issues.<br>

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