1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-52-1

USN-52-1: vim vulnerability

Publication date

23 December 2004

Overview

vim vulnerability

Releases

Details

Ciaran McCreesh found several vulnerabilities related to the use of
options in Vim modeline commands, such as ‘termcap’, ‘printdevice’,
‘titleold’, ‘filetype’, ‘syntax’, ‘backupext’, ‘keymap’, ‘patchmode’,
and ‘langmenu’.

If an attacker tricked an user to open a file with a specially crafted
modeline, he could exploit this to execute arbitrary commands with the
user’s privileges.

Ciaran McCreesh found several vulnerabilities related to the use of
options in Vim modeline commands, such as ‘termcap’, ‘printdevice’,
‘titleold’, ‘filetype’, ‘syntax’, ‘backupext’, ‘keymap’, ‘patchmode’,
and ‘langmenu’.

If an attacker tricked an user to open a file with a specially crafted
modeline, he could exploit this to execute arbitrary commands with the
user’s privileges.

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 vim-tcl – 
vim-gnome – 
vim-lesstif – 
vim-gtk – 
kvim – 
vim – 
vim-python – 
vim-perl – 

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References

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