#2009-015 KDE multiple issues

Description:

KDE, an open source desktop environment, suffers from several bugs that
pose a security risk.

The oCERT team was contacted by Portcullis Security requesting help in
handling a series of issues reported to the KDE project back in July 2007.
Because of an extended period of non-disclosure Portcullis decided to
resubmit the issues to KDE and contacted oCERT asking for assistance in
disclosure coordination.

Ark input sanitization errors:
The KDE archiving tool, Ark, performs insufficient validation which leads
to specially crafted archive files, using unknown MIME types, to be
rendered using a KHTML instance, this can trigger uncontrolled
XMLHTTPRequests to remote sites.

IO Slaves input sanitization errors:
KDE protocol handlers perform insufficient input validation, an attacker
can craft malicious URI that would trigger JavaScript execution.
Additionally the 'help://' protocol handler suffer from directory
traversal. It should be noted that the scope of this issue is limited as
the malicious URIs cannot be embedded in Internet hosted content.

KMail input sanitization errors:
The KDE mail client, KMail, performs insufficient validation which leads
to specially crafted email attachments, using unknown MIME types, to be
rendered using a KHTML instance, this can trigger uncontrolled
XMLHTTPRequests to remote sites.

The exploitation of these vulnerabilities is unlikely according to
Portcullis and KDE but the execution of active content is nonetheless
unexpected and might pose a threat.

All the reported issues have been patched.

Affected version:

KDE < 4.3.2

Fixed version:

KDE >= 4.3.3

Credit: Tim Brown, Portcullis Computer Security Ltd.

CVE: N/A

Timeline:

2009-02-18: vulnerability report received
2009-02-19: contacted KDE security team
2009-03-05: KDE acknowledges the report, provides preliminary analysis for
            the reported issues
2009-03-18: Portcullis provides additional information
2009-04-29: KDE provides preliminary patches
2009-05-27: KDE reports that they are communicating directly with
            Portcullis on the reported issues
2009-06-15: Portcullis provides updated advisories for review
2009-06-18: oCERT asks KDE review of Portcullis advisories
2009-09-23: KDE reports that all issues have been fixed
2009-10-02: KDE reports additional feedback about the fixes
2009-10-15: KDE commits all outstanding fixes
2009-10-27: advisory release

References:
http://www.davidfaure.fr/2009/xmlhttprequest_3.x.diff
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1035539
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1030579
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=938003

Permalink:
http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2009-015.html

-- 
Andrea Barisani |                Founder & Project Coordinator
          oCERT | Open Source Computer Emergency Response Team

<lcars@ocert.org>                         http://www.ocert.org
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