USN-1613-2: Python 2.4 vulnerabilities
Publication date
17 October 2012
Overview
Several security issues were fixed in Python 2.4.
Releases
Packages
- python2.4 - An interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 2.4)
 
Details
USN-1613-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Python 2.5. This update provides the
corresponding updates for Python 2.4.
Original advisory details:
It was discovered that Python would prepend an empty string to sys.path
 under certain circumstances. A local attacker with write access to the
 current working directory could exploit this to execute arbitrary code.
 (CVE-2008-5983)
It was discovered that the audioop module did not correctly perform input
 validation. If a user or automatated system were tricked into opening a
 crafted audio file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via
 application crash. (CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089)
Giampaolo Rodola discovered several race conditions in the smtpd module.
 A remote attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service via
 daemon outage. (
USN-1613-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Python 2.5. This update provides the
corresponding updates for Python 2.4.
Original advisory details:
It was discovered that Python would prepend an empty string to sys.path
 under certain circumstances. A local attacker with write access to the
 current working directory could exploit this to execute arbitrary code.
 (CVE-2008-5983)
It was discovered that the audioop module did not correctly perform input
 validation. If a user or automatated system were tricked into opening a
 crafted audio file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via
 application crash. (CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089)
Giampaolo Rodola discovered several race conditions in the smtpd module.
 A remote attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service via
 daemon outage. (CVE-2010-3493)
It was discovered that the CGIHTTPServer module did not properly perform
 input validation on certain HTTP GET requests. A remote attacker could
 potentially obtain access to CGI script source files. (CVE-2011-1015)
Niels Heinen discovered that the urllib and urllib2 modules would process
 Location headers that specify a redirection to file: URLs. A remote
 attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive information or cause a
 denial of service. (CVE-2011-1521)
It was discovered that SimpleHTTPServer did not use a charset parameter in
 the Content-Type HTTP header. An attacker could potentially exploit this
 to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks against Internet Explorer 7
 users. (CVE-2011-4940)
It was discovered that Python distutils contained a race condition when
 creating the ~/.pypirc file. A local attacker could exploit this to obtain
 sensitive information. (CVE-2011-4944)
It was discovered that SimpleXMLRPCServer did not properly validate its
 input when handling HTTP POST requests. A remote attacker could exploit
 this to cause a denial of service via excessive CPU utilization.
 (CVE-2012-0845)
It was discovered that the Expat module in Python 2.5 computed hash values
 without restricting the ability to trigger hash collisions predictably. If
 a user or application using pyexpat were tricked into opening a crafted XML
 file, an attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive
 CPU resources. (CVE-2012-0876)
Tim Boddy discovered that the Expat module in Python 2.5 did not properly
 handle memory reallocation when processing XML files. If a user or
 application using pyexpat were tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an
 attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive memory
 resources. (CVE-2012-1148)
Update instructions
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.
Learn more about how to get the fixes.The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
| Ubuntu Release | Package Version | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 8.04 hardy | python2.4-minimal – 2.4.5-1ubuntu4.4 | ||
| python2.4 – 2.4.5-1ubuntu4.4 | |||
Reduce your security exposure
Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.
References
- CVE-2012-1148
 - CVE-2012-0876
 - CVE-2012-0845
 - CVE-2011-4944
 - CVE-2011-4940
 - CVE-2011-1521
 - CVE-2011-1015
 - CVE-2010-3493
 - CVE-2010-2089
 - CVE-2010-1634
 
- CVE-2012-1148
 - CVE-2012-0876
 - CVE-2012-0845
 - CVE-2011-4944
 - CVE-2011-4940
 - CVE-2011-1521
 - CVE-2011-1015
 - CVE-2010-3493
 - CVE-2010-2089
 - CVE-2010-1634
 - CVE-2008-5983