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Bug 68857 - x11-wm/windowmaker: Unspecified "WMGLOBAL" Vulnerability
Summary: x11-wm/windowmaker: Unspecified "WMGLOBAL" Vulnerability
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Security
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Vulnerabilities (show other bugs)
Hardware: All All
: High trivial (vote)
Assignee: Gentoo Security
URL:
Whiteboard: C? [stable+ ppc64] koon
Keywords:
Depends on: 69467 72258
Blocks:
  Show dependency tree
 
Reported: 2004-10-25 09:40 UTC by Luke Macken (RETIRED)
Modified: 2006-12-27 01:06 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description Luke Macken (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-25 09:40:26 UTC
TITLE:
WindowMaker Unspecified "WMGLOBAL" Vulnerability

SECUNIA ADVISORY ID:
SA12961

VERIFY ADVISORY:
http://secunia.com/advisories/12961/

CRITICAL:
Less critical

IMPACT:
Unknown

WHERE:
Local system

SOFTWARE:
WindowMaker 0.x
http://secunia.com/product/4132/

DESCRIPTION:
A vulnerability with an unknown impact has been reported in
WindowMaker.

The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient validation of font
specifications in "WMGLOBAL".

SOLUTION:
Update to version 0.90.0:
ftp://windowmaker.org/pub/source/release/WindowMaker-0.90.0.tar.gz

PROVIDED AND/OR DISCOVERED BY:
Reported by vendor.
Comment 1 solar (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-25 10:00:53 UTC
Can we get some arch testing for the windowmaker-0.90.0 ebuild?
It's curently KEYWORDS="~ppc ~sparc"

x86, sparc and alpha have windowmaker-0.80.2-r2.ebuild marked stable
ppc, ppc64 and amd64 are on windowmaker-0.80.2-r4
mips has never marked any version as stable

windowmaker-0.90.0 appears to only have been added to the tree yesterday 
and with so little details coming from upstream the chances of calling it 
stable are probably slim to none.
Perhaps if we could atleast get our arches on ~arch for this package so testing can underway that would be great.
Comment 2 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-26 01:28:42 UTC
More details on how it is vulnerable would be good...

Arches: please test and mark "~" as a first step toward stable-ization :)
Comment 3 Luke Macken (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-26 05:40:37 UTC
Here is a bit more info from the ChangeLog.

- Added a check that only %d is used in a font specification in WMGLOBAL and at
  most once for each font in a fontset (eliminates a possible security exploit)
Comment 4 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-29 01:22:19 UTC
Looks like a privilege escalation through format string issues. Rating "B1?".

alpha, amd64, mips, ppc64 : please test and KEYWORD as "~" so that we can start getting bug reports on this... and get it stable one day.
Comment 5 Bryan Østergaard (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-31 04:11:06 UTC
~alpha keyworded.
Comment 6 Simon Stelling (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-05 14:16:56 UTC
0.90.0 amd64 testing
Comment 7 Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-06 15:11:17 UTC
Testing arch's on windowmaker-0.91.0 would be great as well.  (Basically, the first 0.9X.0 release had some bugs on some platforms.)
Comment 8 Simon Stelling (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-07 01:44:31 UTC
0.91.0 testing too
Comment 9 Hardave Riar (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-14 22:29:06 UTC
windowmaker-0.90.0 and windowmaker-0.91.0-r1 marked ~mips.
Comment 10 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 07:39:48 UTC
gnustep herd : do you think it's ready for stable ? Is there outstanding bugs that need fixing first (if, so please list them as blockers of this bug).

We can't sit on this one for too long.
Comment 11 Markus Rothe (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 10:48:45 UTC
I've problems using this on ppc64, as libffi doesn't compile, but this is only
needed, if I USE="gnustep". So gnustep could be added to use.mask and I could
add the ~ppc64 keyword.

Please let me know, if I should do that or if I should wait until gnustep is useable.

I opened this bug for gnustep on ppc64: bug #72258

Markus
Comment 12 Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 11:29:55 UTC
"gnustep" should definitely not be added to your use flags unless you're feeling a bit adventurous, atm ;-)

However, windowmaker-0.91.0 has been quite stable for me on ppc and x86.  The only issues I've come across are some focusing issues directly related to GNUstep interaction with WindowMaker, so this wouldn't be a concern for most.

All arches should test on 0.91.0, and not 0.90.0, as 0.90.0 was quite bug ridden wrt NETWM support.  Arches please test the latest revision, currently at 0.91.0-r1, in case any of your users do what to try out GNUstep.  No file location changes will (likely) appear after this revision w/o a good reason.

windowmaker-0.91-0.r1 seems to have KEYWORDS="~x86 ~ppc ~sparc ~amd64 ~mips", so it looks like we just need alpha and ppc64 as well to cover the 0.80* series ebuilds.
Comment 13 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 11:52:09 UTC
Let's try to mark windowmaker-0.91-0.r1 stable...
Target KEYWORDS="x86 ppc sparc alpha ppc64 amd64 ~mips"

Arches : please test and mark stable if you can.
Alpha and ppc64 should try to mark ~ first.
Comment 14 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 12:44:42 UTC
stable amd64... fafhrd: please check the versions of the gnustep-base/* packages I marked stable to see if there is reason I should've picked a different version that I was unaware of...

I also took the liberty of adding /etc/X11/dm/Sessions/wmaker.desktop so it shows up in gdm's list of sessions.
Comment 15 Seemant Kulleen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 12:59:04 UTC
eradicator, for gdm in recent gnome's I thought it's /usr/share/xsessions?
Comment 16 Tom Gall (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 14:31:33 UTC
0.91.0-r1 doesn't look to be stable on ppc64, least if you want to use the preferences app :-)

0.90.0 however is working and I intend to mark that stable shortly.  Currently working through the forest of gnustep deps
Comment 17 Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 17:53:02 UTC
I was about to remove the file locations alterations dependant on the use of the "gnustep" USE flag, and then create a rev version bump for testing with this flag, hoping to speed up this security issue.  It looks like amd64 went stable already for the original 0.91.0-r1 ebuild (with the gnustep USE flag), so for platforms where GNUstep is quite unlikely to build/work atm, such as ppc64 (no idea if it can/will work here), could those platforms add "gnustep" to their own use.mask?  Does this sound reasonable?

This scenario is just kind of odd, because WindowMaker can be configured to be tightly coupled to a GNUstep based installation, but it doesn't have to be (and, good to note, it usually isn't, for most), and I wouldn't want to slow down fixing a security issue just 'cause GNUstep isn't happy. ;-)
Comment 18 Jason Wever (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-23 20:28:58 UTC
To follow up to comment #16, the reason prefs doesn't work here is the default menu references /usr/GNUstepSystem/Applications/WPrefs.app/WPrefs which doesn't exist.  The correct path is /usr/GNUstep/System/Applications/WPrefs.app/WPrefs
Comment 19 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-24 00:35:46 UTC
seemant: I added it locally to the /etc/X11/dm/Sessions, and it showed up in my sessions list for gdm-2.6.0.4-r1

I'm guessing one of those is deprecated... and knowing my luck, I used the deprecated one... I'll double check.
Comment 20 Joe Jezak (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-24 03:06:27 UTC
I tested windowmaker-0.91.0-r1 on ppc and it seems to work fine, but when trying to commit for this bug, repoman complains of IUSE.invalid (profile), bad RDEPENDS for ~mips on gnustep-base/gnustep-env and the xinerama patch is 26K.

Thanks!
Comment 21 Olivier Crete (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-24 11:38:40 UTC
marked 0.91.0-r1 stable on x86
Comment 22 Joe Jezak (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-26 04:07:23 UTC
Marked ppc stable.
Comment 23 Jason Wever (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-26 11:01:25 UTC
Stable on sparc (with gnustep useflag masking).  Let us know when the gnustep people feel confident with stablizing it and we'll unmask.
Comment 24 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-26 14:10:49 UTC
Sent email upstream for more information
Comment 25 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-29 06:24:40 UTC
From WindowMaker team :

----------
The impact is that if you have your configuration files (most specifically
~/GNUstep/Defaults/WMGLOBAL) world writable, someone could put one of
those string format exploits in there. So, I guess it's nothing
alarming...
----------

So it's a local root in case you screw up your configuration badly. I think I'm going to drop that one as invalid.

There is a local root if you set /etc/init.d files world writeable too, and it's not a vulnerability.
Comment 26 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-29 06:47:51 UTC
It's not even a local root, it's a local user exploit. This is hardly a vulnerability, so it will be closed without GLSA.

Keeping the bug open to track stable marks
Comment 27 Bryan Østergaard (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-29 18:10:21 UTC
Stable on alpha.
Comment 28 Markus Rothe (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-18 12:01:13 UTC
added dependency, which blocks me from marking it stable on ppc64.
Comment 29 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-30 06:45:48 UTC
Time to close this... This is not a vulnerability anyway. I still hope ppc64 will be able to mark it stable someday, but security doesn't care, in fact.