Issued:
2009-11-16
Updated:
2009-11-16

RHSA-2009:1585 - Moderate: samba3x security and bug fix update

Synopsis

Moderate: samba3x security and bug fix update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Moderate

Topic

Updated samba3x packages that fix multiple security issues and various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary.

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

Description

Samba is a suite of programs used by machines to share files, printers, and other information. These samba3x packages provide Samba 3.3, which is a Technology Preview for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. These packages cannot be installed in parallel with the samba packages. Note: Technology Previews are not intended for production use.

A denial of service flaw was found in the Samba smbd daemon. An authenticated, remote user could send a specially-crafted response that would cause an smbd child process to enter an infinite loop. An authenticated, remote user could use this flaw to exhaust system resources by opening multiple CIFS sessions. (CVE-2009-2906)

An uninitialized data access flaw was discovered in the smbd daemon when using the non-default "dos filemode" configuration option in "smb.conf". An authenticated, remote user with write access to a file could possibly use this flaw to change an access control list for that file, even when such access should have been denied. (CVE-2009-1888)

A flaw was discovered in the way Samba handled users without a home directory set in the back-end password database (e.g. "/etc/passwd"). If a share for the home directory of such a user was created (e.g. using the automated "[homes]" share), any user able to access that share could see the whole file system, possibly bypassing intended access restrictions. (CVE-2009-2813)

The mount.cifs program printed CIFS passwords as part of its debug output when running in verbose mode. When mount.cifs had the setuid bit set, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to disclose passwords from a file that would otherwise be inaccessible to that user. Note: mount.cifs from the samba3x packages distributed by Red Hat does not have the setuid bit set. This flaw only affected systems where the setuid bit was manually set by an administrator. (CVE-2009-2948)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

  • the samba3x packages contained missing and conflicting license information. License information was missing for the libtalloc, libtdb, and tdb-tools packages. The samba3x-common package provided a COPYING file; however, it stated the license was GPLv2, while RPM metadata stated the licenses were either GPLv3 or LGPLv3. This update adds the correct licensing information to the samba3x-common, libsmbclient, libtalloc, libtdb, and tdb-tools packages. (BZ#528633)

  • the upstream Samba version in the samba3x packages distributed with the RHEA-2009:1399 update contained broken implementations of the Netlogon credential chain and SAMR access checks security subsystems. This prevented Samba from acting as a domain controller: Client systems could not join the domain; users could not authenticate; and systems could not access the user and group list. (BZ#524551)

  • this update resolves interoperability issues with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. (BZ#529022)

These packages upgrade Samba from version 3.3.5 to version 3.3.8. Refer to the Samba Release Notes for a list of changes between versions: Content from samba.org is not included.http://samba.org/samba/history/

Users of samba3x should upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues. After installing this update, the smb service will be restarted automatically.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support5.4x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64

Fixes

CVEs

References

Additional information