KDE Security Advisory: kcheckpass local root vulnerability
Original Release Date: 2008-09-05
URL: http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20050905-1.txt

0. References

CAN-2005-2494

1. Systems affected:

All KDE releases starting from KDE 3.2.0 up to including
KDE 3.4.2.



2. Overview:

Ilja van Sprundel from suresec.org notified the KDE
security team about a serious lock file handling error
in kcheckpass that can, in some configurations, be used
to gain root access.

In order for an exploit to succeed, the directory /var/lock
has to be writeable for a user that is allowed to invoke
kcheckpass.


3. Impact:

A local user can escalate its privileges to the root user.


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:

Patch for KDE 3.4.2 is available from

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

86f7d6fd68568dfd1edcae453958ba31 post-3.4.2-kdebase-kcheckpass.diff