6.9 - RHSA-2013:0870

Problem Description:

Updated tomcat5 packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

RHEL Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) - i386, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - i386, ia64, ppc, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - i386, x86_64

3. Description:

Apache Tomcat is a servlet container for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technologies.

A flaw was found in the way the tomcat5 init script handled the catalina.out log file. A malicious web application deployed on Tomcat could use this flaw to perform a symbolic link attack to change the ownership of an arbitrary system file to that of the tomcat user, allowing them to escalate their privileges to root. (CVE-2013-1976)

Note: With this update, /var/log/tomcat5/catalina.out has been moved to the /var/log/tomcat5-initd.log file.

Red Hat would like to thank Simon Fayer of Imperial College London for reporting this issue.

Users of Tomcat are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct this issue. Tomcat must be restarted for this update to take effect.

4. Solution:

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

5. Bugs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/):

927622 - CVE-2013-1976 tomcat: Improper TOMCAT_LOG management in init script (DoS, ACE)