FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

X.org libraries -- multiple vulnerabilities

Affected packages
libX11 < 1.6.4,1
libXfixes < 5.0.3
libXi < 1.7.7,1
libXrandr < 1.5.1
libXrender < 0.9.10
libXtst < 1.2.3
libXv < 1.0.11,1
libXvMC < 1.0.10

Details

VuXML ID 1cf65085-a760-41d2-9251-943e1af62eb8
Discovery 2016-10-04
Entry 2016-10-07
Modified 2016-10-10

Matthieu Herrb reports:

Tobias Stoeckmann from the OpenBSD project has discovered a number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues. These issue come in addition to the ones discovered by Ilja van Sprundel in 2013.

Most of these issues stem from the client libraries trusting the server to send correct protocol data, and not verifying that the values will not overflow or cause other damage. Most of the time X clients and servers are run by the same user, with the server more privileged than the clients, so this is not a problem, but there are scenarios in which a privileged client can be connected to an unprivileged server, for instance, connecting a setuid X client (such as a screen lock program) to a virtual X server (such as Xvfb or Xephyr) which the user has modified to return invalid data, potentially allowing the user to escalate their privileges.

References

CVE Name CVE-2016-5407
URL https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2016-October/002720.html