Debian Security Advisory

DLA-1666-1 freerdp -- LTS security update

Date Reported:
09 Feb 2019
Affected Packages:
freerdp
Vulnerable:
Yes
Security database references:
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2018-8786, CVE-2018-8787, CVE-2018-8788, CVE-2018-8789.
More information:

For the FreeRDP version in Debian jessie LTS a security and functionality update has recently been provided. FreeRDP is a free re-implementation of the Microsoft RDP protocol (server and client side) with freerdp-x11 being the most common RDP client these days.

Functional improvements:

With help from FreeRDP upstream (cudos to Bernhard Miklautz and Martin Fleisz) we are happy to announce that RDP proto v6 and CredSSP v3 support have been backported to the old FreeRDP 1.1 branch.

Since Q2/2018, Microsoft Windows servers and clients received an update that defaulted their RDP server to proto version 6. Since this change, people have not been able anymore to connect to recently updated MS Windows machines using old the FreeRDP 1.1 branch as found in Debian jessie LTS and Debian stretch.

With the recent FreeRDP upload to Debian jessie LTS, connecting to up-to-date MS Windows machines is now again possible.

Security issues:

  • CVE-2018-8786

    FreeRDP contained an integer truncation that lead to a heap-based buffer overflow in function update_read_bitmap_update() and resulted in a memory corruption and probably even a remote code execution.

  • CVE-2018-8787

    FreeRDP contained an integer overflow that leads to a heap-based buffer overflow in function gdi_Bitmap_Decompress() and resulted in a memory corruption and probably even a remote code execution.

  • CVE-2018-8788

    FreeRDP contained an out-of-bounds write of up to 4 bytes in function nsc_rle_decode() that resulted in a memory corruption and possibly even a remote code execution.

  • CVE-2018-8789

    FreeRDP contained several out-of-bounds reads in the NTLM authentication module that resulted in a denial of service (segfault).

For Debian 8 Jessie, these security problems have been fixed in version 1.1.0~git20140921.1.440916e+dfsg1-13~deb8u3.

We recommend that you upgrade your freerdp packages.

Further information about Debian LTS security advisories, how to apply these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be found at: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS