RPM: Buffer overflow

Background

The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is a command line driven package management system capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and updating computer software packages.

Description

Vladimir Mosgalin has reported that when processing certain packages, RPM incorrectly allocates memory for the packages, possibly causing a heap-based buffer overflow.

Impact

An attacker could entice a user to open a specially crafted RPM package and execute code with the privileges of that user if certain locales are set.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All RPM users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-arch/rpm-4.4.6-r3"