(RHSA-2003:360) apache security update

The Apache HTTP server is a powerful, full-featured, efficient, and
freely-available Web server.

An issue in the handling of regular expressions from configuration files
was discovered in releases of the Apache HTTP Server version 1.3 prior to
1.3.29. To exploit this issue an attacker would need to have the ability
to write to Apache configuration files such as .htaccess or httpd.conf. A
carefully-crafted configuration file can cause an exploitable buffer
overflow and would allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code in the
context of the server (in default configurations as the ‘apache’ user).
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has
assigned the name CAN-2003-0542 to this issue.

This update also includes an alternative version of the httpd binary which
supports setting the MaxClients configuration directive to values above 256.

All users of the Apache HTTP Web Server are advised to upgrade to the
applicable errata packages, which contain back-ported fixes correcting
the above security issue.

Note that the instructions in the “Solution” section of this errata contain
additional steps required to complete the upgrade process.