KDE 1537 Published by

KDE Security Advisory: Buffer overflow in fliccd of kdeedu/kstars/indi

Original Release Date: 2005-02-15
URL: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20050215-1.txt


0. References
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2005-0011


1. Systems affected:

KDE 3.3 up to including KDE 3.3.2.



2. Overview:

KStars includes support for the Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface (INDI). The build system of this extra 3rd party software contained an installation hook to install fliccd (part of INDI) as SUID root application.

Erik Sjlund discovered that the code contains several vulnerabilities that allow stack based buffer overflows.


3. Impact:

If the fliccd binary is installed as suid root, it enables root privilege escalation for local users, or, if the daemon is actually running (which it does not by default) and is running as root, remote root privilege escalation.


4. Solution:

Source code patches have been made available which fix these vulnerabilities. Contact your OS vendor / binary package provider for information about how to obtain updated binary packages.


5. Patch:

A patch for 3.3.2 is available from

ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/security_patches :

2b9c8330bec2c0dc6669ccc40b24dd70 post-3.3.2-kdeedu-kstars.diff



6. Time line and credits:
05/01/2005 Erik Sjlund notifies Debian Security.
07/01/2005 Martin Schulze from the Debian Security team notifies KDE security team about the vulnerabilities.
09/01/2005 Dirk Mueller from KDE security team develops a patch that addresses the discovered and similiar vulnerabilities. Contacting Jasem Mutlaq, the author of INDI.
21/01/2005 Regressions are discovered with the patch and subsequently fixed over the next few days.
15/02/2005 Coordinated public disclosure.