Debian Security Advisory

DSA-1694-1 xterm -- design flaw

Date Reported:
02 Jan 2009
Affected Packages:
xterm
Vulnerable:
Yes
Security database references:
In the Debian bugtracking system: Bug 510030.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2008-2383.
More information:

Paul Szabo discovered that xterm, a terminal emulator for the X Window System, places arbitrary characters into the input buffer when displaying certain crafted escape sequences (CVE-2008-2383).

As an additional precaution, this security update also disables font changing, user-defined keys, and X property changes through escape sequences.

For the stable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 222-1etch3.

For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem will be fixed soon.

We recommend that you upgrade your xterm package.

Fixed in:

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (etch)

Source:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3.dsc
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3.diff.gz
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222.orig.tar.gz
Alpha:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_alpha.deb
AMD64:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_amd64.deb
ARM:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_arm.deb
HP Precision:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_hppa.deb
Intel IA-32:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_i386.deb
Intel IA-64:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_ia64.deb
Big-endian MIPS:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_mips.deb
Little-endian MIPS:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_mipsel.deb
PowerPC:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_powerpc.deb
IBM S/390:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_s390.deb
Sun Sparc:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/x/xterm/xterm_222-1etch3_sparc.deb

MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.