multi-gnome-terminal: Information leak — GLSA 200409-10

Active keystroke logging in multi-gnome-terminal has been discovered in potentially world-readable files. This could allow any authorized user on the system to read sensitive data, including passwords.

Affected packages

x11-terms/multi-gnome-terminal on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.6.2-r1
Unaffected versions >= 1.6.2-r1

Background

multi-gnome-terminal is an enhanced terminal emulator that is derived from gnome-terminal.

Description

multi-gnome-terminal contains debugging code that has been known to output active keystrokes to a potentially unsafe location. Output has been seen to show up in the '.xsession-errors' file in the users home directory. Since this file is world-readable on many machines, this bug has the potential to leak sensitive information to anyone using the system.

Impact

Any authorized user on the local machine has the ability to read any critical data that has been entered into the terminal, including passwords.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All multi-gnome-terminal users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge sync

 # emerge -pv ">=x11-terms/multi-gnome-terminal-1.6.2-r1"
 # emerge ">=x11-terms/multi-gnome-terminal-1.6.2-r1"

References

Release date
September 06, 2004

Latest revision
September 06, 2004: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries