gEdit is prone to a format string vulnerability. Exploitation may occur when the program is invoked with a filename that includes malicious format specifiers. This issue could be exploited to corrupt arbitrary regions of memory with attacker-supplied data, potentially resulting in execution of arbitrary code in the context of the user running the program.
This issue should also affect RHEL3 and RHEL2.1
The following example is available (taken from securityfocus.com) bash-2.05b#cat fmtexp.c #include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("hah gedit\n"); } bash-2.05b#gcc -o fk fmtexp.c bash-2.05b#mv fk AA%n%n%n.c bash-2.05b#gedit AA%n%n%n.c
This issue does not affect RHEL2.1
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on the solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2005-499.html