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Home >> Browse Vulnerability Assessment Database >> Mandrake Local Security Checks >> MDKSA-2005:186-1: lynx

Vulnerability Assessment Details

MDKSA-2005:186-1: lynx

Vulnerability Assessment Summary
Check for the version of the lynx package

Detailed Explanation for this Vulnerability Assessment

The remote host is missing the patch for the advisory MDKSA-2005:186-1 (lynx).

Ulf Harnhammar discovered a remote buffer overflow in lynx versions 2.8.2
through 2.8.5. When Lynx connects to an NNTP server to fetch information about
the available articles in a newsgroup, it will call a function called HTrjis()
with the information from certain article headers. The function adds missing
ESC characters to certain data, to support Asian character sets. However, it
does not check if it writes outside of the char array buf, and that causes a
remote stack-based buffer overflow, with full control over EIP, EBX, EBP, ESI
and EDI. Two attack vectors to make a victim visit a URL to a dangerous news
server are: (a) *redirecting scripts*, where the victim visits some web page
and it redirects automatically to a malicious URL, and (b) *links in web
pages*, where the victim visits some web page and selects a link on the page to
a malicious URL. Attack vector (b) is helped by the fact that Lynx does not
automatically display where links lead to, unlike many graphical web browsers.
The updated packages have been patched to address this issue.

Update:

The previous patchset had a bug in the patches themselves, which was uncovered
by Klaus Singvogel of Novell/SUSE in auditing crashes on some architectures.

Solution : http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDKSA-2005:186-1
Network Security Threat Level: High

Networks Security ID:

Vulnerability Assessment Copyright: This script is Copyright (C) 2005 Tenable Network Security

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