Security Issues in Xpdf Make Waves
In the past, security bugs in the Xpdf PDF viewer have endangered Linux systems time and again, and projects that use Xpdf code are also affected.
Security researchers at Secunia have discovered three vulnerabilities in Xpdf 3.02. All three are located in the stream.cc file. The first bug which affects the "DCTStream::readProgressiveDataUnit()" function can lead to memory corruption on indexing an array. The other two bugs, one of which is in the "DCTStream::reset()" function and the other in "CCITTFaxStream::lookChar()", can lead to heap-based buffer overflows. In all three cases, a carefully crafted PDF file is required. If the attacker can trick a victim into opening the file, the attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code.
Secunia discovered the vulnerabilities in Xpdf 3.02 (with xpdf-3.02pl1.patch), however, other versions may also be affected. As many projects, such as Kpdf, Koffice, Cups and Poppler rely on source code by Xpdf, these projects are also affected, as Secunia has proved.
The developers of Xpdf have now released a patch to remove the vulnerabilities. Users who prefer not to build the application from scratch are advised to avoid PDFs from untrusted sources until their distributor releases a new package.
Tag Cloud
News
-
Google and NASA Partner in Quantum Computing Project
Vendor D-Wave scores big with a sale to NASA's Quantum Intelligence Lab.
-
Mageia Project Announces Mageia 3 Linux
Many package updates and Steam integration highlight the latest from the Mandriva-based community Linux.
-
FSF Outs the World Wide Web Consortium over DRM Proposal
Richard Stallman calls for the W3C to remain independent of vendor interests.
-
Debian 7.0 Debuts
The new release supports nine architectures, 73 human languages, and zero non-Free components.
-
Alpha Version of Fedora 19 Released
Fedora developers release the first alpha version of Fedora 19, known as Schrödinger’s Cat, for general testing. The final release is expected in July 2013.
-
ack 2.0 Released
ack is a grep-like, command-line tool that has been optimized for programmers to search large trees of source code.
-
SUSE Studio 1.3 Released
New features in SUSE Studio 1.3 include enhanced cloud integration, VM platform support, and lifecycle management.
-
Xen To Become Linux Foundation Collaborative Project
The Linux Foundation recently announced that the Xen Project is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
-
RunRev Releases Open Source Version of LiveCode
Open source version of LiveCode is now available for developing apps, games, and utilities for all major platforms.
-
OpenDaylight Project Formed
OpenDaylight is an open source software-defined networking project committed to furthering adoption of SDN and accelerating innovation in a vendor-neutral and open environment.