Security Information

Debian takes security very seriously. We handle all security problems brought to our attention and ensure that they are corrected within a reasonable timeframe. Many advisories are coordinated with other free software vendors and are published the same day a vulnerability is made public and we also have a Security Audit team that reviews the archive looking for new or unfixed security bugs.

Experience has shown that security through obscurity does not work. Public disclosure allows for more rapid and better solutions to security problems. In that vein, this page addresses Debian's status with respect to various known security holes, which could potentially affect Debian.

Debian also participates in security standardization efforts: the Debian Security Advisories are CVE-Compatible (review the cross references) and Debian is represented in the Board of the Open Vulnerability Assessment Language project.

Keeping your Debian system secure

In order to receive the latest Debian security advisories, subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list.

You can use apt to easily get the latest security updates. This requires a line such as

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

For more information about security issues in Debian, please refer to the Security Team FAQ and a manual called Securing Debian.

Recent Advisories

These web pages include a condensed archive of security advisories posted to the debian-security-announce list.

[07 Nov 2009] DSA-1930 drupal6
several vulnerabilities
[05 Nov 2009] DSA-1929 linux-2.6
privilege escalation/denial of service/sensitive memory leak
[05 Nov 2009] DSA-1928 linux-2.6.24
privilege escalation/denial of service/sensitive memory leak
[05 Nov 2009] DSA-1927 linux-2.6
privilege escalation/denial of service/sensitive memory leak
[04 Nov 2009] DSA-1926 typo3-src
several vulnerabilities
[31 Oct 2009] DSA-1925 proftpd-dfsg
insufficient input validation
[31 Oct 2009] DSA-1924 mahara
several vulnerabilities
[28 Oct 2009] DSA-1922 xulrunner
several vulnerabilities
[28 Oct 2009] DSA-1921 expat
denial of service
[27 Oct 2009] DSA-1923 libhtml-parser-perl
denial of service
[26 Oct 2009] DSA-1920 nginx
denial of service
[25 Oct 2009] DSA-1919 smarty
several vulnerabilities
[25 Oct 2009] DSA-1918 phpmyadmin
several vulnerabilities
[24 Oct 2009] DSA-1917 mimetex
several vulnerabilities
[23 Oct 2009] DSA-1916 kdelibs
insufficient input validation
[22 Oct 2009] DSA-1915 linux-2.6
privilege escalation/denial of service/sensitive memory leak
[22 Oct 2009] DSA-1914 mapserver
several vulnerabilities
[17 Oct 2009] DSA-1913 bugzilla
SQL injection vulnerability
[16 Oct 2009] DSA-1912 camlimages
integer overflow
[14 Oct 2009] DSA-1911 pygresql
missing escape function
[14 Oct 2009] DSA-1910 mysql-ocaml
missing escape function
[14 Oct 2009] DSA-1909 postgresql-ocaml
missing escape function
[14 Oct 2009] DSA-1908 samba
several vulnerabilities
[13 Oct 2009] DSA-1907 kvm
several vulnerabilities
[11 Oct 2009] DSA-1906 clamav
End-of-life announcement for clamav in stable and oldstable
[10 Oct 2009] DSA-1905 python-django
insufficient input validation
[09 Oct 2009] DSA-1904 wget
insufficient input validation

The latest Debian security advisories are also available in RDF format. We also offer a second file that includes the first paragraph of the corresponding advisory so you can see in it what the advisory is about.

The older security advisories are also available:

Debian distributions are not vulnerable to all security problems. The Debian Security Tracker collects all information about the vulnerability status of Debian packages, and can be searched by CVE name or by package.

Contact information

Please read the Security Team FAQ before contacting us, your question may well be answered there already!

The contact information is in the FAQ as well.