AWStats: Remote code execution

Background

AWStats is an advanced log file analyzer and statistics generator.

Description

When ‘awstats.pl’ is run as a CGI script, it fails to validate specific inputs which are used in a Perl open() function call. Furthermore, a user could read log file content even when plugin rawlog was not enabled.

Impact

A remote attacker could supply AWStats malicious input, potentially allowing the execution of arbitrary code with the rights of the web server. He could also access raw log contents.

Workaround

Making sure that AWStats does not run as a CGI script will avoid the issue, but we recommend that users upgrade to the latest version, which fixes these bugs.

Resolution

All AWStats users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=www-misc/awstats-6.3-r2"

Note: Users with the vhosts USE flag set should manually use webapp-config to finalize the update.