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=========================================================== Ubuntu Security Notice USN-135-1 May 27, 2005 gdb vulnerabilities CAN-2005-1704, CAN-2005-1705 =========================================================== A security issue affects the following Ubuntu releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog) Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) The following packages are affected: gdb The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version 6.1-3ubuntu0.1 (for Ubuntu 4.10), or 6.3-5ubuntu1.1 (for Ubuntu 5.04). In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes. Details follow: Tavis Ormandy found an integer overflow in the GNU debugger. By tricking an user into merely load a specially crafted executable, an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running gdb. However, loading untrusted binaries without actually executing them is rather uncommon, so the risk of this flaw is low. (CAN-2005-1704) Tavis Ormandy also discovered that gdb loads and executes the file ".gdbinit" in the current directory even if the file belongs to a different user. By tricking an user into run gdb in a directory with a malicious .gdbinit file, a local attacker could exploit this to run arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user invoking gdb. (CAN-2005-1705)