(RHSA-2005:327) telnet security update

The telnet package provides a command line telnet client. The telnet-server
package includes a telnet daemon, telnetd, that supports remote login to
the host machine.

Two buffer overflow flaws were discovered in the way the telnet client
handles messages from a server. An attacker may be able to execute
arbitrary code on a victim’s machine if the victim can be tricked into
connecting to a malicious telnet server. The Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CAN-2005-0468
and CAN-2005-0469 to these issues.

Additionally, the following bugs have been fixed in these erratum packages
for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3:

• telnetd could loop on an error in the child side process

• There was a race condition in telnetd on a wtmp lock on some occasions

• The command line in the process table was sometimes too long and caused
  bad output from the ps command

• The 8-bit binary option was not working

Users of telnet should upgrade to this updated package, which contains
backported patches to correct these issues.

Red Hat would like to thank iDEFENSE for their responsible disclosure of
this issue.