Issued:

2006-09-12

Updated:

2006-09-12

RHSA-2006:0663 - ncompress security update

Synopsis

ncompress security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Low

Topic

Updated ncompress packages that address a security issue and fix bugs are now available.

This update has been rated as having low security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Description

The ncompress package contains file compression and decompression utilities, which are compatible with the original UNIX compress utility (.Z file extensions).

Tavis Ormandy of the Google Security Team discovered a lack of bounds checking in ncompress. An attacker could create a carefully crafted file that could execute arbitrary code if uncompressed by a victim. (CVE-2006-1168)

In addition, two bugs that affected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 ncompress packages were fixed:

• The display statistics and compression results in verbose mode were not shown when operating on zero length files.

• An attempt to compress zero length files resulted in an unexpected return code.

Users of ncompress are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. To use Red Hat Network, launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate RPMs being upgraded on your system.

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.ia64.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.s390.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-38.rhel2.ia64.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.ppc.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.s390x.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.ia64.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.i386.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.x86_64.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-39.rhel3.s390x.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.s390.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.x86_64.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-38.rhel2.i386.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.i386.rpm
• ncompress-4.2.4-43.rhel4.ppc.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 189215
• This content is not included.BZ - 189216
• This content is not included.BZ - 201335

CVEs

• CVE-2006-1168

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#low

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.