Debian Security Advisory

xpdf -- local exploit

Date Reported:
10 Sep 2000
Affected Packages:
xpdf
Vulnerable:
Yes
Security database references:
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2000-0727, CVE-2000-0728.
More information:
xpdf as distributed in Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 suffered from two problems:
  1. creation of temporary files was not done safely which made xpdf vulnerable to a symlink attack.
  2. when handling URLs in documents no checking was done for shell metacharacters before starting the browser. This makes it possible to construct a document which cause xpdf to run arbitrary commands when the user views a URL.
Both problems have been fixed in version 0.90-7, and we recommend you upgrade your xpdf package immediately.
Fixed in:

Debian 2.2 (potato)

Source:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/source/xpdf_0.90-7.diff.gz
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/source/xpdf_0.90-7.dsc
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/source/xpdf_0.90.orig.tar.gz
alpha:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-alpha/xpdf_0.90-7_alpha.deb
arm:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-arm/xpdf_0.90-7_arm.deb
i386:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-i386/xpdf_0.90-7_i386.deb
m68k:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-m68k/xpdf_0.90-7_m68k.deb
powerpc:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-powerpc/xpdf_0.90-7_powerpc.deb
sparc:
http://security.debian.org/dists/stable/updates/main/binary-sparc/xpdf_0.90-7_sparc.deb