Festival: Privilege elevation

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200707-10 / festival
Release Date	July 25, 2007
Latest Revision	July 25, 2007: 01
Impact	high
Exploitable	local

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
app-accessibility/festival	< 1.95_beta-r4	>= 1.95_beta-r4	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #170477

Synopsis

A vulnerability has been discovered in Festival, allowing for a local privilege escalation.

2. Impact Information

Background

Festival is a text-to-speech accessibility program.

Description

Konstantine Shirow reported a vulnerability in default Gentoo configurations of Festival. The daemon is configured to run with root privileges and to listen on localhost, without requiring a password.

Impact

A local attacker could gain root privileges by connecting to the daemon and execute arbitrary commands.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

Set a password in the configuration file /etc/festival/server.scm by adding the line: (set! server_passwd password)

Resolution

All Festival users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-accessibility/festival-1.95_beta-r4"

Page updated July 25, 2007

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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