(RHSA-2007:1177) Important: autofs5 security update

The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon, which
automatically mounts file systems when you use them, and unmounts them when
you are not using them. This can include network file systems and CD-ROMs.
The autofs5 packages were made available as a technology preview in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4.6.

There was a security issue with the default configuration of autofs version
5, whereby the entry for the “-hosts” map did not specify the “nodev” mount
option. A local user with control of a remote NFS server could create
special device files on the remote file system, that if mounted using the
default “-hosts” map, could allow the user to access important system
devices. (CVE-2007-6285)

This issue is similar to CVE-2007-5964, which fixed a missing “nosuid”
mount option in autofs. Both the “nodev” and “nosuid” options should be
enabled to prevent a possible compromise of machine integrity.

Due to the fact that autofs always mounted “-hosts” map entries “dev” by
default, autofs has now been altered to always use the “nodev” option when
mounting from the default “-hosts” map. The “dev” 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.

All autofs5 users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
resolve this issue.

Red Hat would like to thank Tim Baum for reporting this issue.