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                                  CERT-Renater

                       Note d'Information No. 2002/VULN361
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DATE                      : 23/12/2002

HARDWARE PLATFORM(S)      : /

OPERATING SYSTEM(S)       : systems running KDE 2 or KDE 3 releases

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KDE Security Advisory: Multiple vulnerabilities in KDE
Original Release Date: 2002-12-20
URL: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20021220-1.txt

0. References

         None.


1. Systems affected:

         All KDE 2 releases and all KDE 3 releases (up to and including
         KDE 3.0.5).


2. Overview:

         In some instances KDE fails to properly quote parameters of
         instructions passed to a command shell for execution.

         These parameters may incorporate data such as URLs, filenames and
         e-mail addresses, and this data may be provided remotely to a victim
         in an e-mail, a webpage or files on a network filesystem or other
         untrusted source.

         By carefully crafting such data an attacker might be able to
         execute arbitary commands on a vulnerable sytem using the victim's
         account and privileges.

         The KDE Project is not aware of any existing exploits of these
         vulnerabilities, but is releasing this advisory with patches to
         correct the issues. The patches also provide better safe guards and
         check data from untrusted sources more strictly in multiple places.


3. Impact:

         The vulnerabilities potentially enable local or remote attackers
         to compromise the privacy of a vicitim's data and to execute arbitrary
         shell commands with the victim's privileges, such as erasing files or
         accessing or modifying data.


4. Solution:

         The code audit resulted in several fixes which have been applied
         to the KDE 2.2.x and each KDE 3.x branch.

         All identified problems have been corrected in KDE 3.0.5a.
         For affected KDE 3.0 systems, we strongly recommend upgrading
         to this latest stable release.

         KDE 3.0.5a can be downloaded from

         http://download.kde.org/stable/3.0.5a/

         Please visit the 3.0.5a Info Page (http://www.kde.org/info/3.0.5a.html)
         and your vendor's website for exact package locations and information
         about available binary packages or updates.

         For affected KDE 2 systems, a patch for the 2.2.2 source code has
         been made available which fixes these vulnerabilities. Contact your
         OS vendor / binary package provider for information about how to
         obtain updated binary packages.


5. Patches:

         Patches are available for KDE 2.2.2 from the KDE FTP server
         (ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/security_patches/):


         MD5SUM                            PATCH

         522331e2b47f84956eb2df1fcf89ba17  post-2.2.2-kdebase.diff
         0dbd747882b942465646efe0ba6af802  post-2.2.2-kdegames.diff
         4b9c93acd452d1de2f4f0bca5b05593f  post-2.2.2-kdegraphics.diff
         93a12594d0fb48c7b50bfd4a10a9935d  post-2.2.2-kdelibs.diff
         d1d25b39ee98e340ac3730f7afe54f0c  post-2.2.2-kdemultimedia.diff
         59ac7be4995bed8b119a4e5882e54cff  post-2.2.2-kdenetwork.diff
         0a3ae9eeeceefb2f631a26ec787663a9  post-2.2.2-kdepim.diff
         690c7fdab1bbc743eafac9b06997a03b  post-2.2.2-kdesdk.diff
         8174e328f47e18a8a52b13b34f5c54e5  post-2.2.2-kdeutils.diff



6. Timeline and credits:

         11/26/2002      FozZy of the "Hackademy Audit Project"
                         notified the KDE Security Team
                         <security@kde.org> about vulnerable code parts.
         11/27/2002      Patches for the initially reported vulnerabilites
                         were applied to KDE CVS.
         11/27/2002      An audit of KDE CVS was started to find more instances
                         of the problematic code sequences.
         12/06/2002      KDE 3.1 release was delayed because the audit was not
                         yet finished.
         12/17/2002      Patches for KDE 2.2.2 were created.
         12/20/2002      KDE 3.0.5a tarballs were generated and released.
         12/21/2002      Public Security Advisory by the KDE Security team.

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