1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-144-1

USN-144-1: dbus vulnerability

Publication date

28 June 2005

Overview

dbus vulnerability

Releases

Details

Besides providing the global system-wide communication bus, dbus also
offers per-user “session” buses which applications in an user’s
session can create and use to communicate with each other. Daniel
Reed discovered that the default configuration of the session dbus
allowed a local user to connect to another user’s session bus if its
address was known. The fixed packages restrict the default permissions
to the user who owns the session dbus instance.

Please note that a standard Ubuntu installation does not use the
session bus for anything, so this can only be exploited if you are
using custom software which uses it.

Besides providing the global system-wide communication bus, dbus also
offers per-user “session” buses which applications in an user’s
session can create and use to communicate with each other. Daniel
Reed discovered that the default configuration of the session dbus
allowed a local user to connect to another user’s session bus if its
address was known. The fixed packages restrict the default permissions
to the user who owns the session dbus instance.

Please note that a standard Ubuntu installation does not use the
session bus for anything, so this can only be exploited if you are
using custom software which uses it.

Update instructions

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

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

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

Ubuntu Release Package Version
4.10 warty dbus-1 – 

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References

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