[USN-554-1] teTeX and TeX Live vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-554-1          December 06, 2007
tetex-bin, texlive-bin vulnerabilities
CVE-2007-5935, CVE-2007-5936, CVE-2007-5937

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
Ubuntu 6.10
Ubuntu 7.04
Ubuntu 7.10

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

tetex-bin 3.0-13ubuntu6.1

Ubuntu 6.10

tetex-bin 3.0-17ubuntu2.1

Ubuntu 7.10

texlive-extra-utils 2007-12ubuntu3.1

Ubuntu 7.04

tetex-bin 3.0-27ubuntu1.2

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes.

Bastien Roucaries discovered that dvips as included in tetex-bin and texlive-bin did not properly perform bounds checking. If a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted dvi file, dvips could be made to crash and execute code as the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5935) Joachim Schrod discovered that the dviljk utilities created temporary files in an insecure way. Local users could exploit a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5936) Joachim Schrod discovered that the dviljk utilities did not perform bounds checking in many instances. If a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted dvi file, the dviljk utilities could be made to crash and execute code as the user invoking the program. (CVE-2007-5937)