libgtop: Privilege escalation — GLSA 200701-17

libgtop improperly handles filenames, possibly allowing for the execution of arbitrary code.

Affected packages

Background

libgtop facilitates the libgtop_daemon, which is used by GNOME to obtain information about remote systems.

Description

Liu Qishuai discovered that glibtop_get_proc_map_s() in sysdeps/linux/procmap.c does not properly allocate memory for storing a filename, allowing certain filenames to cause the buffer to overflow on the stack.

Impact

By tricking a victim into executing an application that uses the libgtop library (e.g. libgtop_daemon or gnome-system-monitor), a local attacker could specify a specially crafted filename to be used by libgtop causing a buffer overflow and possibly execute arbitrary code with the rights of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=gnome-base/libgtop-2.14.6"

References

• CVE-2007-0235

Release date
January 23, 2007

Latest revision
January 23, 2007: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries

• 162169