4 - USN-290-1

A security issue affects the following Ubuntu releases:

Ubuntu 5.04 Ubuntu 5.10 Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

This advisory also applies to the corresponding versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu.

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

Ubuntu 5.04:
awstats 6.3-1ubuntu0.3

Ubuntu 5.10:
awstats 6.4-1ubuntu1.2

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
awstats 6.5-1ubuntu1.1

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes.

Details follow:

Hendrik Weimer discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in awstats. By supplying the 'configdir' CGI parameter and setting it to an attacker-controlled directory (such as an FTP account, /tmp, or similar), an attacker could execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the web server (user 'www-data').

This update disables the 'configdir' parameter by default. If all local user accounts can be trusted, it can be reenabled by running awstats with the AWSTATS_ENABLE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable set to a nonempty value.