4.4 - RHSA-2008:0061

Problem Description:

Updated setroubleshoot packages that fix two security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - noarch Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - noarch

3. Description:

The setroubleshoot packages provide tools to help diagnose SELinux problems. When AVC messages occur, an alert is generated that gives information about the problem, and how to create a resolution.

A flaw was found in the way sealert wrote diagnostic messages to a temporary file. A local unprivileged user could perform a symbolic link attack, and cause arbitrary files, writable by other users, to be overwritten when a victim runs sealert. (CVE-2007-5495)

A flaw was found in the way sealert displayed records from the setroubleshoot database as unescaped HTML. An local unprivileged attacker could cause AVC denial events with carefully crafted process or file names, injecting arbitrary HTML tags into the logs, which could be used as a scripting attack, or to confuse the user running sealert. (CVE-2007-5496)

Additionally, the following bugs have been fixed in these update packages:

* in certain situations, the sealert process used excessive CPU. These alerts are now capped at a maximum of 30, D-Bus is used instead of polling, threads causing excessive wake-up have been removed, and more robust exception-handling has been added.

* different combinations of the sealert '-a', '-l', '-H', and '-v' options did not work as documented.

* the SETroubleShoot browser did not allow multiple entries to be deleted.

* the SETroubleShoot browser did not display statements that displayed whether SELinux was using Enforcing or Permissive mode, particularly when warning about SELinux preventions.

* in certain cases, the SETroubleShoot browser gave incorrect instructions regarding paths, and would not display the full paths to files.

* adding an email recipient to the recipients option from the /etc/setroubleshoot/setroubleshoot.cfg file and then generating an SELinux denial caused a traceback error. The recipients option has been removed; email addresses are now managed through the SETroubleShoot browser by navigating to File -> Edit Email Alert List, or by editing the /var/lib/setroubleshoot/email_alert_recipients file.

* the setroubleshoot browser incorrectly displayed a period between the httpd_sys_content_t context and the directory path.

* on the PowerPC architecture, The get_credentials() function in access_control.py would generate an exception when it called the socket.getsockopt() function.

* The code which handles path information has been completely rewritten so that assumptions on path information which were misleading are no longer made. If the path information is not present, it will be presented as "".

* setroubleshoot had problems with non-English locales under certain circumstances, possibly causing a python traceback, an sealert window pop-up containing an error, a "RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded" error after a traceback, or a "UnicodeEncodeError" after a traceback.

* sealert ran even when SELinux was disabled, causing "attempt to open server connection failed" errors. Sealert now checks whether SELinux is enabled or disabled.

* the database setroubleshoot maintains was world-readable. The setroubleshoot database is now mode 600, and is owned by the root user and group.

* setroubleshoot did not validate requests to set AVC filtering options for users. In these updated packages, checks ensure that requests originate from the filter owner.

* the previous setroubleshoot packages required a number of GNOME packages and libraries. setroubleshoot has therefore been split into 2 packages: setroubleshoot and setroubleshoot-server.

* a bug in decoding the audit field caused an "Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding!" error message. The decoding code has been rewritten.

* a file name mismatch in the setroubleshoot init script would cause a failure to shut down.

Users of setroubleshoot are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.

4. Solution:

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

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

227806 - setroubleshoot browser doesn't allow multiple entry deletion 240355 - setroubleshoot gives bad suggestions 241543 - Adding recipents entry to config file crashes setroubleshoot 243800 - typo in sealert / setroubleshoot suggestion 244345 - missing filename in setroubleshoot (AVC.get_path() returns incomplete path) 250239 - Runtime Error: maximum recursion depth exceeded 288221 - CVE-2007-5495 setroubleshoot insecure logging 288271 - CVE-2007-5496 setroubleshoot log injection 288881 - setroubleshoot failure when httpd is trying to access rpm_log_t 312281 - setroubleshoot requires gnome to run 431768 - setroubleshoot - audit_listener_database.xml:3029: parser error in xmlParseDoc() 436564 - socket.getsockopt() on ppc generates exception