Konversation: Various vulnerabilities

Security Team Contact Address

Updated January 24, 2005

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200501-34 / konversation
Release Date	January 24, 2005
Latest Revision	January 24, 2005: 01
Impact	normal
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
net-irc/konversation	< 0.15.1	>= 0.15.1	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #78712

Synopsis

Konversation contains multiple vulnerabilities that could lead to remote command execution or information leaks.

2. Impact Information

Background

Konversation is a user-friendly IRC client for KDE.

Description

Wouter Coekaerts has discovered three vulnerabilites within Konversation:

The Server::parseWildcards function, which is used by the "Quick Buttons", does not properly handle variable expansion (CAN-2005-0129).
Perl scripts included with Konversation do not properly escape shell metacharacters (CAN-2005-0130).
The 'Nick' and 'Password' fields in the Quick Connect dialog can be easily confused (CAN-2005-0131).

Impact

A malicious server could create specially-crafted channels, which would exploit certain flaws in Konversation, potentially leading to the execution of shell commands. A user could also unintentionally input their password into the 'Nick' field in the Quick Connect dialog, exposing his password to IRC users, and log files.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Konversation users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-irc/konversation-0.15.1"

4. References