It was found that Subversion's mod_dav_svn Apache HTTPD server module will crash when a PROPFIND request is made against activity URLs. This can lead to a DoS. There is a flaw in mod_dav_svn that improperly tries to process this request instead of rejecting it and results in an attempt to access invalid memory (NULL). Which results in the httpd process segfaulting and dying. How bad the impact of that is varies based upon the configuration of the httpd server. httpd servers using a prefork MPM will simply start a new process to replace the process that died. Servers using threaded MPMs may be processing other requests in the same process as the process that the attack causes to die. In either case there is an increased processing impact of restarting a process and the cost of per process caches being lost.
External Reference: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/Mar/56
This issue affects the version of subversion as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. This issue affects the version of subversion as shipped with Fedora 17 and Fedora 18.
External References: http://subversion.apache.org/security/CVE-2013-1849-advisory.txt
Announcements: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-announce/201304.mbox/%3CCADkdwvRoyVrZV12tgC0FMGrc6%2BMisd3qTcZ%2BDdpFGgTahkgAkQ%40mail.gmail.com%3E (v1.7.9) http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-announce/201304.mbox/%3CCADkdwvSTMLbn4q_KM3Ph2UOeSiPGhEK4%3DSvwEjaHW_GUGkYWPQ%40mail.gmail.com%3E (v1.6.21)
Created subversion tracking bugs for this issue Affects: fedora-all [bug 948813]
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2013:0737 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-0737.html