USN-870-1: PyGreSQL vulnerability

Publication date

11 December 2009

Overview

PyGreSQL vulnerability

Releases


Packages

Details

Steffen Joeris discovered that PyGreSQL 3.8 did not use PostgreSQL’s safe
string and bytea functions in its own escaping functions. As a result,
applications written to use PyGreSQL’s escaping functions are vulnerable to
SQL injections when processing certain multi-byte character sequences.
Because the safe functions require a database connection, to maintain
backwards compatibility, pg.escape_string() and pg.escape_bytea() are still
available, but applications will have to be adjusted to use the new
pyobj.escape_string() and pyobj.escape_bytea() functions. For example, code
containing:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = pg.escape_string(untrusted_input)

should be adjusted to use:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = connection.escape_string(untrusted_input)

Steffen Joeris discovered that PyGreSQL 3.8 did not use PostgreSQL’s safe
string and bytea functions in its own escaping functions. As a result,
applications written to use PyGreSQL’s escaping functions are vulnerable to
SQL injections when processing certain multi-byte character sequences.
Because the safe functions require a database connection, to maintain
backwards compatibility, pg.escape_string() and pg.escape_bytea() are still
available, but applications will have to be adjusted to use the new
pyobj.escape_string() and pyobj.escape_bytea() functions. For example, code
containing:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = pg.escape_string(untrusted_input)

should be adjusted to use:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = connection.escape_string(untrusted_input)

Update instructions

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect 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
8.10 intrepid python-pygresql –  1:3.8.1-3ubuntu0.1
8.04 hardy python-pygresql –  1:3.8.1-2ubuntu0.1

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