teTeX, pTeX, CSTeX: Multiple vulnerabilities

Background

teTeX is a complete and open source TeX distribution. CSTeX is another TeX distribution including Czech and Slovak support. pTeX is another alternative that allows Japanese publishing with TeX. xdvizilla is an auxiliary script used to integrate DVI file viewing in Mozilla-based browsers.

Description

teTeX, pTeX and CSTeX all make use of Xpdf code and may therefore be vulnerable to the various overflows that were discovered in Xpdf code (CAN-2004-0888, CAN-2004-0889, CAN-2004-1125 and CAN-2005-0064). Furthermore, Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pena discovered that the xdvizilla script does not handle temporary files correctly.

Impact

An attacker could design a malicious input file which, when processed using one of the TeX distributions, could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. Furthermore, a local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When xdvizilla is called, this would result in the file being overwritten with the rights of the user running the script.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All teTeX users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-text/tetex-2.0.2-r5"

All CSTeX users should also upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-text/cstetex-2.0.2-r1"

Finally, all pTeX users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-text/ptex-3.1.4-r2"