6.9 - USN-1613-2

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

- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Summary:

Several security issues were fixed in Python 2.4.

Software Description: - python2.4: An interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 2.4)

Details:

USN-1613-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Python 2.5. This update provides the corresponding updates for Python 2.4.

Original advisory details:

It was discovered that Python would prepend an empty string to sys.path
under certain circumstances. A local attacker with write access to the
current working directory could exploit this to execute arbitrary code.
(CVE-2008-5983)

It was discovered that the audioop module did not correctly perform input
validation. If a user or automatated system were tricked into opening a
crafted audio file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via
application crash. (CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089)

Giampaolo Rodola discovered several race conditions in the smtpd module.
A remote attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service via
daemon outage. (CVE-2010-3493)

It was discovered that the CGIHTTPServer module did not properly perform
input validation on certain HTTP GET requests. A remote attacker could
potentially obtain access to CGI script source files. (CVE-2011-1015)

Niels Heinen discovered that the urllib and urllib2 modules would process
Location headers that specify a redirection to file: URLs. A remote
attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive information or cause a
denial of service. (CVE-2011-1521)

It was discovered that SimpleHTTPServer did not use a charset parameter in
the Content-Type HTTP header. An attacker could potentially exploit this
to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks against Internet Explorer 7
users. (CVE-2011-4940)

It was discovered that Python distutils contained a race condition when
creating the ~/.pypirc file. A local attacker could exploit this to obtain
sensitive information. (CVE-2011-4944)

It was discovered that SimpleXMLRPCServer did not properly validate its
input when handling HTTP POST requests. A remote attacker could exploit
this to cause a denial of service via excessive CPU utilization.
(CVE-2012-0845)

It was discovered that the Expat module in Python 2.5 computed hash values
without restricting the ability to trigger hash collisions predictably. If
a user or application using pyexpat were tricked into opening a crafted XML
file, an attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive
CPU resources. (CVE-2012-0876)

Tim Boddy discovered that the Expat module in Python 2.5 did not properly
handle memory reallocation when processing XML files. If a user or
application using pyexpat were tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an
attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive memory
resources. (CVE-2012-1148)

Update instructions:

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

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
python2.4 2.4.5-1ubuntu4.4
python2.4-minimal 2.4.5-1ubuntu4.4

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References:
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-1613-2
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-1613-1
CVE-2008-5983, CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089, CVE-2010-3493,
CVE-2011-1015, CVE-2011-1521, CVE-2011-4940, CVE-2011-4944,
CVE-2012-0845, CVE-2012-0876, CVE-2012-1148

Package Information:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python2.4/2.4.5-1ubuntu4.4