(don't yet know if this affects RHEL4)
From email to: security (forwarded to me by Owen Taylor): * Notice to Vendor * Date: 2005-08-04 We are bringing to your attention one or more potential security vulnerabilities affecting one of your products. In accordance with the SITIC Vulnerability Disclosure Process, such information is supplied in the form of preliminary SITIC Vulnerability Advisories, to be completed for later public release by SITIC. Please find attached: * List of preliminary SITIC Vulnerability Advisories: - SA05-001 Evolution multiple remote format string bugs * List of additional files: - Evolution-data.zip containing evolution.formstring.patch evolution.ldif evolution.tasklist.txt evolution.vcf In the initial stage we ask you, the vendor, to: 1) within 5 days confirm receipt of this notice 2) within 5 days confirm which products are affected by the vulnerability 3) within 5 days provide preliminary date(s) for availability of remedies using the contact information below. The aim for this process is a coordinated release of a SITIC Vulnerability Advisory for each concerned vulnerability, complete with instructions for eliminating or mitigating the vulnerability, agreed between the vendor and SITIC. Any queries that arise from this issue may be addressed to SITIC with a subject line that includes the SITIC Vulnerability Advisory Reference as tracking code. We kindly ask you to discuss with SITIC prior to any further distribution. We are looking forward to working with you on this issue. Contact information: Swedish IT Incident Centre, SITIC P O Box 5398, SE-102 49 Stockholm, Sweden Telephone: +46-8-678 5799 Email: sitic at pts dot se http://www.sitic.se Sitic PGP key: http://www.sitic.se/dokument/pgpkey.asc About SITIC: The Swedish IT Incident Centre within the National Post and Telecom Agency has the task to support society in working with protection against IT incidents. SITIC facilitates exchange of information regarding IT incidents between organisations in society, and disseminates information about new problems which potentially may impede the functionality of IT systems. In addition, SITIC provides information and advice regarding proactive measures and compiles and publishes statistics.
Content of attachment "SA05-001.txt" of that email: * SITIC Vulnerability Advisory * Advisory Name: Evolution multiple remote format string bugs Advisory Reference: SA05-001 Date of initial release: Preliminary 2005-08-04 Product: Evolution 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 Platform: Linux, BSD systems, Unix Effect: Remote code execution Vulnerability Identifier: Not assigned Overview: Evolution suffers from several format string bugs when handling data from remote sources. These bugs lead to crashes or the execution of arbitrary assembly language code. Details: 1) The first format string bug occurs when viewing the full vCard data attached to an e-mail message. When opening an e-mail message, only a compact view of some of the fields from the vCard is displayed, and this does not trigger the vulnerability. To be affected, the user must click on Show Full vCard or perform similar actions such as clicking on Save in Addressbook and then viewing the saved data under the Contacts tab. Why is this important? An attacker might notice that an organisation uses Evolution, for instance after seeing the "X-Mailer: Evolution x.y.z" e-mail header in their e-mails. He or she could then send out e-mail messages with malicious vCards to many e-mail accounts at the organisation, in the hope that some of the recipients will view the full vCard data sooner or later, thus exposing the organisation to this format string bug. 2) The second format string bug occurs when displaying contact data fetched from remote LDAP servers. 3) The third format string bug occurs when displaying task list data from remote servers. 4) The fourth, and least serious, format string bug occurs when the user goes to the Calendars tab to save task list data that is vulnerable to problem 3 above. Other calendar entries that do not come from task lists are also affected. * * * FOR GNOME ONLY * * * We have attached some example files, so you can test these vulnerabilities. In all cases, Evolution will crash after performing an action similar to printf("%n%n%n%n...");. The attached evolution.vcf file will exhibit problem 1, when you e-mail it to an Evolution user, open that e-mail message in Evolution, and click on Show Full vCard. The attached evolution.ldif file will exhibit problem 2, when you add it to an LDAP server, configure Evolution to use that server, and then search for and open the data from the file in Evolution. The attached evolution.tasklist.txt file will exhibit problem 3, when you put it on a web server, configure Evolution to use that server, and then open the task from the file in Evolution. Problem 4 can be tested by configuring the system to exhibit problem 3 above, then selecting the Calendars tab, right-clicking on the task from the web server, and selecting Save as and a file name. It also affects right-clicking and saving other calendar entries that do not come from task lists. You may also want to look into possible format string bugs when calling the em_format_format_error(), camel_filter_driver_log(), camel_stream_printf() and camel_exception_setv() functions. Some of the calls to them look a bit suspicious. * * * END * * * Mitigating factors: Users that never use any of the vulnerable features in Evolution are not affected. Affected versions: o Evolution 1.5 to Evolution 2.3.6.1 Recommendations: To be defined Patch information: We have attached a patch called evolution.formstring.patch that corrects all mentioned issues. Please review it. Acknowledgments: These vulnerabilities were discovered by Ulf Harnhammar for SITIC, Swedish IT Incident Centre. Contact information: Swedish IT Incident Centre, SITIC P O Box 5398, SE-102 49 Stockholm, Sweden Telephone: +46-8-678 5799 Email: sitic at pts dot se http://www.sitic.se/ Revision history: Preliminary 2005-08-04 About SITIC: The Swedish IT Incident Centre within the National Post and Telecom Agency has the task to support society in working with protection against IT incidents. SITIC facilitates exchange of information regarding IT incidents between organisations in society, and disseminates information about new problems which potentially may impede the functionality of IT systems. In addition, SITIC provides information and advice regarding proactive measures and compiles and publishes statistics. Disclaimer: The decision to follow or act on information or advice contained in this Vulnerability Advisory is the responsibility of each user or organisation. SITIC accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions contained within this Vulnerability Advisory, nor for any consequences which may arise from following or acting on information or advice contained herein.
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-2005-267.html