Apache group issues update, warns of security hole

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0528apachgroup.html

By Paul Roberts
IDG News Service, 
05/28/03

For the second time in as many months, the Apache Software Foundation
(ASF) released an updated version of the popular open source Web
server software, only to warn users of a critical security hole in
previous versions of the software that the update patches.

The new version of Apache, 2.0.46, was described as "principally a
security and bug fix release" in a bulletin released by the open
source organization Wednesday.

Among those fixes is a patch for a security hole in the mod_dav module
that could be exploited remotely, causing an Apache Web server process
to crash, according to the bulletin.

Mod_dav is an open source module that provides WebDAV (World Wide Web
Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol support for the Apache
Web server.

WebDAV is a set of extensions to HTTP that allows users to edit and
manage files on remote Web servers. The protocol is designed to create
interoperable, collaborative applications that facilitate
geographically-dispersed "virtual" software development teams.

Few details were available regarding the mod_dav vulnerability, which
was first discovered and reported to the Foundation by a researcher at
security firm iDefense.

Further details regarding the problem will be published on Friday, the
bulletin said.

In March, Microsoft released a patch for a security hole in a core
Windows component used to handle an unchecked buffer in a Windows 2000
component used to handle the WebDAV protocol. That flaw, which has
already been exploited by hackers, could enable an attacker to cause a
buffer overflow on the machine running Internet Information Server,
according to the Microsoft Security bulletin MS03-007.

A second fix is for a denial-of-service vulnerability affecting
Apache's authentication module.

By exploiting a bug in configuration scripts used by a function for
password validation, attackers could launch remote denial of service
attacks that would cause valid user names and passwords to be
rejected, the bulletin said.

The vulnerabilities affect versions of Apache ranging from 2.0.37 up
to the most recent release, 2.0.45, which came out in April.

That latest version was also released in response to a heretofore
unknown critical security flaw which, like the mod_dav vulnerability,
was discovered by iDefense and described in detail at a later date.

As with its last software update, the Apache Software Foundation said
that 2.0.46 was the "best version of Apache available" and recommended
that users of prior Apache versions upgrade.



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