USN-171-1: PHP4 vulnerabilities

Releases

• Ubuntu 5.04
• Ubuntu 4.10

Details

CAN-2005-1751:

The php4-dev package ships a copy of the "shtool" utility in
/usr/lib/php4/build/, which provides useful functionality for
developers of software packages. Eric Romang discovered that shtool
created temporary files in an insecure manner. This could allow
a symlink attack to create or overwrite arbitrary files with the
privileges of the user invoking the shtool program.

CAN-1005-1759:

The creation of temporary files in shtool was also vulnerable to a
race condition which allowed a local user to read the contents of the
temporary file. However, this file does not usually contain sensitive
information since shtool is usually used for building software
packages.

CAN-2005-2498:

Stefan Esser discovered another remote code execution vulnerability in
the XMLRPC module of the PEAR (PHP Extension and Application
Repository) extension of PHP. By sending specially crafted XMLRPC
requests to an affected web server, a remote attacker could exploit
this to execute arbitrary code with the web server's privileges.

In Ubuntu, the PEAR extension is unsupported (it is contained in the
php4-pear package which is part of universe). However, since this is
a highly critical vulnerability, that package was fixed anyway.

Please note that many applications contain a copy of the affected
XMLRPC code, which must be fixed separately. The following packages
may also be affected, but are unsupported in Ubuntu:

• drupal
• wordpress
• phpwiki
• horde3
• ewiki
• egroupware

• phpgroupware

  These packages might be fixed by the community later.

  The following common third party applications might be affected as
  well, but not packaged for Ubuntu:

• Serendipity

• Postnuke
• tikiwiki

• phpwebsite

  If you run any affected software, please check whether you are
  affected and upgrade it as soon as possible to protect your
  server.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 5.04

• php4-pear -
• php4-dev -

Ubuntu 4.10

• php4-pear -
• php4-dev -

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

References

• CVE-2005-1759
• CVE-2005-2498
• CVE-2005-1751