Security Information / 2016 / Security Information -- DSA-3687-1 nspr

Debian Security Advisory

DSA-3687-1 nspr -- security update

Date Reported:

05 Oct 2016

Affected Packages:

nspr

Vulnerable:

Yes

Security database references:

In the Debian bugtracking system: Bug 583651.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2016-1951.

More information:

Two vulnerabilities were reported in NSPR, a library to abstract over operating system interfaces developed by the Mozilla project.

• CVE-2016-1951

  q1 reported that the NSPR implementation of sprintf-style string formatting function miscomputed memory allocation sizes, potentially leading to heap-based buffer overflows

The second issue concerns environment variable processing in NSPR. The library did not ignore environment variables used to configuring logging and tracing in processes which underwent a SUID/SGID/AT_SECURE transition at process start. In certain system configurations, this allowed local users to escalate their privileges.

In addition, this nspr update contains further stability and correctness fixes and contains support code for an upcoming nss update.

For the stable distribution (jessie), these problems have been fixed in version 2:4.12-1+debu8u1.

For the unstable distribution (sid), these problems have been fixed in version 2:4.12-1.

We recommend that you upgrade your nspr packages.