Moderate: pidgin security update
Security Advisory: Moderate
Updated pidgin packages that fix multiple security issues are now available
for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate
security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores,
which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability
from the CVE links in the References section.
Pidgin is an instant messaging program which can log in to multiple
accounts on multiple instant messaging networks simultaneously.
An input sanitization flaw was found in the way the AOL Open System for
Communication in Realtime (OSCAR) protocol plug-in in Pidgin, used by the
AOL ICQ and AIM instant messaging systems, escaped certain UTF-8
characters. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash Pidgin via a
specially-crafted OSCAR message. (CVE-2011-4601)
Multiple NULL pointer dereference flaws were found in the Jingle extension
of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) protocol plug-in
in Pidgin. A remote attacker could use these flaws to crash Pidgin via a
specially-crafted Jingle multimedia message. (CVE-2011-4602)
Red Hat would like to thank the Pidgin project for reporting these issues.
Upstream acknowledges Evgeny Boger as the original reporter of
CVE-2011-4601, and Thijs Alkemade as the original reporter of
CVE-2011-4602.
All Pidgin users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain
backported patches to resolve these issues. Pidgin must be restarted for
this update to take effect.
Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.
This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to
use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259
Vulmon