(RHSA-2007:1128) Important: autofs security update

The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon, which
automatically mounts and unmounts file systems after a period of
inactivity.

There was a security issue with the default installed configuration of
autofs version 5 whereby the entry for the “hosts” map did not specify the
“nosuid” mount option. A local user with control of a remote nfs server
could create a setuid root executable within an exported filesystem on the
remote nfs server that, if mounted using the default hosts map, would allow
the user to gain root privileges. (CVE-2007-5964)

Due to the fact that autofs always mounted hosts map entries suid by
default, autofs has now been altered to always use the “nosuid” option when
mounting from the default hosts map. The “suid” option must be explicitly
given in the master map entry to revert to the old behavior. This change
affects only the hosts map which corresponds to the /net entry in the
default configuration.

Users are advised to upgrade to these updated autofs packages, which
resolve this issue.

Red Hat would like to thank Josh Lange for reporting this issue.