Yellow Dog Linux Security Announcement
--------------------------------------

Package: 	mailx
Issue Date: 	August 10, 2000
Update Date: 	August 10, 2000
Priority: 	high
Advisory ID: 	YDU-20000810-2


1. Topic:

   /bin/mail can be utilized in conjunction with
   suidperl to gain root access.


2. Problem:

   Under certain conditions, suidperl will attempt to send mail
   to the local superuser account using /bin/mail. An exploit script
   may use suidperl and mailx's tendency to inherit settings from the 
   environment, to gain local root access.

   This update restricts the list of variables /bin/mail will read from the 
   environment. 


3. Solution:

   a) Updating via yup...
   We suggest that you use the Yellow Dog Update Program (yup)
   to keep your system up-to-date. The following command will
   automatically retrieve and install the fixed version of
   the mailx onto your system:

   	yup update mailx

   b) Updating manually...
   The update can also be retrieved manually from our ftp site
   below along with the rpm command that should be used to install
   the update.

   ftp://ftp.yellowdoglinux.com/pub/yellowdog/updates/champion-1.2/ppc/RPMS/
   mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm

        rpm -Fvh mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm


4. Verification

MD5 checksum				Package
--------------------------------	----------------------------
6f3af116f66a05b7784e72bd0658159c  	RPMS/mailx-8.1.1-16.ppc.rpm
ca0581b6e0a13a2c0ed78f16609eaf20  	SRPMS/mailx-8.1.1-16.src.rpm

If you wish to verify that each package has not been corrupted or tampered with,
examine the md5sum with the following command: rpm --checksig --nogpg filename


5. Misc.

Terra Soft has setup a moderated mailing list where these security, bugfix, and package
enhancement announcements will be posted. See http://lists.yellowdoglinux.com/ for more
information.

For information regarding the usage of yup, the Yellow Dog Update Program, see 
http://http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/yup.shtml