oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt
From: "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink () debian org>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:27:52 +0100
* Robert Buchholz <rbu () gentoo org> [080327 03:30]:
The same issue also exists in: aterm, tested 1.0.1 mrxvt, tested 0.5.3 multi-aterm, tested 0.2.1 rxvt-unicode, tested 8.3 and 8.9 wterm, tested with 6.2.9
These seem all to be rxvt forks. (At least aterm and wterm are, I'm judging the rest by their names).
eterm, tested 0.9.4
That seems to be an independent buggy implementation. (I've sent a patch to the Debian bts at http://bugs.debian.org/473127)
This is almost half of the terminal emulators I tried. There are probably tons of other X applications doing this, not all with the impact of a shell, but many allow starting other programs one way or another.
I'm really quite suprised to see this, as an application has to actually do something to end up having this problem.
Reading the attack vector, I would consider it a vulnerability, but looking at the amount of programs that fall into this category, I'm worried how many programs do this and if the low impact is really worth fixing all of them.
Clicking fast enough to enter some commands is not that easy, and not every program will allow direct entering of commands, so I guess are most programs are only usability problems (you get to wait 3 to 10 seconds before you get an error message when by mistake starting it via an ssh without -X), and a malicious fake X server would most likely be prepared for every single program (to reject unexploitable programe early so it is not noticed, and to send the keyboard events to the right window), so most programs might not be that much of a problem. On the other hand, having so many different terminals with almost identical source might make it even easier to write one exploit that can cope with all of them. Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link
Current thread:
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt, (continued)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Steven M. Christey (Mar 04)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Steve Kemp (Mar 04)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Tomas Hoger (Mar 05)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Steve Kemp (Mar 05)
- wiki: Debian, auditing tools, vendor-sec Solar Designer (Mar 05)
- Re: wiki: Debian, auditing tools, vendor-sec Steve Kemp (Mar 05)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Steve Kemp (Mar 04)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Nico Golde (Mar 05)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Steven M. Christey (Mar 04)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Nico Golde (Mar 05)
- Re: request CVE id: insecure handling of DISPLAY in rxvt Bernhard R. Link (Mar 28)