GNU Emacs, XEmacs: Multiple vulnerabilities

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200902-06 / emacs edit-utils
Release Date	February 23, 2009
Latest Revision	February 23, 2009: 01
Impact	normal
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
app-editors/emacs	< 22.2-r3	>= 22.2-r3, revision >= 21.4-r17, < 19	All supported architectures
app-xemacs/edit-utils	< 2.39	>= 2.39	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #221197, #236498

Synopsis

Two vulnerabilities were found in GNU Emacs, possibly leading to user-assisted execution of arbitrary code. One also affects edit-utils in XEmacs.

2. Impact Information

Background

GNU Emacs and XEmacs are highly extensible and customizable text editors. edit-utils are miscellaneous extensions to XEmacs.

Description

Morten Welinder reports about GNU Emacs and edit-utils in XEmacs: By shipping a .flc accompanying a source file (.c for example) and setting font-lock-support-mode to fast-lock-mode in the source file through local variables, any Lisp code in the .flc file is executed without warning (CVE-2008-2142).

Romain Francoise reported a security risk in a feature of GNU Emacs related to interacting with Python. The vulnerability arises because Python, by default, prepends the current directory to the module search path, allowing for arbitrary code execution when launched from a specially crafted directory (CVE-2008-3949).

Impact

Remote attackers could entice a user to open a specially crafted file in GNU Emacs, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary Emacs Lisp code or arbitrary Python code with the privileges of the user running GNU Emacs or XEmacs.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All GNU Emacs users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-editors/emacs-22.2-r3"

All edit-utils users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.2: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-xemacs/edit-utils-2.39"

4. References

Page updated February 23, 2009

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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