USN-919-1: Emacs vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 9.10
• Ubuntu 9.04
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 8.04

Packages

• emacs22 -
• emacs23 -

Details

Dan Rosenberg discovered that the email helper in Emacs did not correctly
check file permissions. A local attacker could perform a symlink race
to read or append to another user's mailbox if it was stored under a
group-writable group-"mail" directory.

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 9.10

• emacs23-bin-common - 23.1+1-4ubuntu3.2
• emacs22-bin-common - 22.2-0ubuntu6.2

Ubuntu 9.04

• emacs22-bin-common - 22.2-0ubuntu2.9.04.1

Ubuntu 8.10

• emacs22-bin-common - 22.2-0ubuntu2.8.10.1

Ubuntu 8.04

• emacs22-bin-common - 22.1-0ubuntu10.2

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.

References

• CVE-2010-0825