Archive 17. December 2010

Bug 1044 – CVE-2010-4345 exim privilege escalation. The second part of the Exim march. This is the privilege escalation via Exim and an alternative config file. Because Exim is a monolithic server running under suid rights (i.e., starts with root rights even if executed as another user), there is a small time window in which the service always runs as root - and this is exploited through the alternative config file. The patch restricts the locations where these config files may reside and, combined with the configuration of write permissions on this location, can prevent non-root users from injecting their own configs.

Bug 787 – memory corruption in string_format code. Important if you're running a Debian version older than Lenny, as there are no more security updates available and you have to patch it yourself. This one closes the door. By the way, it's quite interesting to look at the date - it has been fixed since 2008, but due to the early discontinuation of security updates for outdated Debian releases, it is still present in many Debian systems based on Etch (and older). Debian is only recommended for use if you can actually keep up with every release change in a timely manner. Otherwise, solutions like Ubuntu LTS are by far the better choice. Apart from that, it's quite embarrassing that Lenny still had such an outdated Exim ...

rhodecode is something like bitbucket or github. Like bitbucket, it uses mercurial and offers various tools in the interface. The special thing? The code is free and thus something like Bitbucket for self-hosting. Maybe an alternative to Trac.