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/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Then execute apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to download and apply the pending updates.

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.

[09 Feb 2012] DSA-2407 cvs - heap overflow
[09 Feb 2012] DSA-2406 icedove - several vulnerabilities
[06 Feb 2012] DSA-2405 apache2 - multiple issues
[06 Feb 2012] DSA-2403 php5 - code injection
[05 Feb 2012] DSA-2404 xen-qemu-dm-4.0 - buffer overflow
[04 Feb 2012] DSA-2384 cacti - several vulnerabilities
[02 Feb 2012] DSA-2402 iceape - several vulnerabilities
[02 Feb 2012] DSA-2401 tomcat6 - several vulnerabilities
[02 Feb 2012] DSA-2400 iceweasel - several vulnerabilities
[31 Jan 2012] DSA-2399 php5 - several vulnerabilities
[30 Jan 2012] DSA-2398 curl - several vulnerabilities
[29 Jan 2012] DSA-2397 icu - buffer underflow
[27 Jan 2012] DSA-2396 qemu-kvm - buffer underflow
[27 Jan 2012] DSA-2395 wireshark - buffer underflow
[27 Jan 2012] DSA-2394 libxml2 - several vulnerabilities
[25 Jan 2012] DSA-2393 bip - buffer overflow
[23 Jan 2012] DSA-2392 openssl - out-of-bounds read
[23 Jan 2012] DSA-2301 rails - several vulnerabilities
[22 Jan 2012] DSA-2391 phpmyadmin - several vulnerabilities
[15 Jan 2012] DSA-2390 openssl - several vulnerabilities
[15 Jan 2012] DSA-2389 linux-2.6 - privilege escalation/denial of service/information leak
[14 Jan 2012] DSA-2388 t1lib - several vulnerabilities
[11 Jan 2012] DSA-2387 simplesamlphp - insufficient input sanitation

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: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997 and undated security advisories, included for posterity.

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.