Dan Rosenberg discovered that the email helper in Emacs did not correctly check file permissions. A local attacker could perform a symlink race to read or append to another user’s mailbox if it was stored under a group-writable group-“mail” directory.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
29 March 2010
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Dan Rosenberg discovered that the email helper in Emacs did not correctly check file permissions. A local attacker could perform a symlink race to read or append to another user’s mailbox if it was stored under a group-writable group-“mail” directory.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes.
Vulmon