BEAST: Denial of Service

Security Team  Contact Address

Updated April 27, 2007

1.  Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Version Information

Advisory Reference GLSA 200704-22 / BEAST
Release Date April 27, 2007
Latest Revision April 27, 2007: 01
Impact low
Exploitable local
Package Vulnerable versions Unaffected versions Architecture(s)
media-sound/beast < 0.7.1 >= 0.7.1 All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #163146

Synopsis

A vulnerability has been discovered in BEAST allowing for a Denial of Service.

2.  Impact Information

Background

BEdevilled Audio SysTem is an audio compositor, supporting a wide range of audio formats.

Description

BEAST, which is installed as setuid root, fails to properly check whether it can drop privileges accordingly if seteuid() fails due to a user exceeding assigned resource limits.

Impact

A local user could exceed his resource limit in order to prevent the seteuid() call from succeeding. This may lead BEAST to keep running with root privileges. Then, the local user could use the "save as" dialog box to overwrite any file on the vulnerable system, potentially leading to a Denial of Service.

3.  Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All BEAST users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=media-sound/beast-0.7.1"

4.  References