We’ve got a load of security vulnerabilities to announce for Pidgin today. The patched packages should be available for download at most Ubuntu mirrors. I would advise that you update as soon as possible.
Details follow:
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle certain topic messages in the IRC protocol handler. If a user were tricked into connecting to a malicious IRC server, an attacker could cause Pidgin to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. (CVE-2009-2703)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly enforce the “require TLS/SSL” setting when connecting to certain older Jabber servers. If a remote attacker were able to perform a man-in-the-middle attack, this flaw could be exploited to view sensitive information. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. (CVE-2009-3026)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle certain SLP invite messages in the MSN protocol handler. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted invite message and cause Pidgin to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. (CVE-2009-3083)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle certain errors in the XMPP protocol handler. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted message and cause Pidgin to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. (CVE-2009-3085)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle malformed contact-list data in the OSCAR protocol handler. A remote attacker could send specially crafted contact-list data and cause Pidgin to crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-3615)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle custom smiley requests in the MSN protocol handler. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted filename in a custom smiley request and obtain arbitrary files via directory traversal. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10. (CVE-2010-0013)
Pidgin for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was also updated to fix connection issues with the MSN protocol.
USN-675-1 and USN-781-1 provided updated Pidgin packages to fix multiple security vulnerabilities in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. The security patches to fix CVE-2008-2955 and CVE-2009-1376 were incomplete. This update corrects the problem.
Original advisory details:
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle file transfers containing a long filename and special characters in the MSN protocol handler. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted filename in a file transfer request and cause Pidgin to crash, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2008-2955)
- It was discovered that Pidgin did not properly handle certain malformed messages in the MSN protocol handler. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted message and possibly execute arbitrary code with user privileges. (CVE-2009-1376)
To apply these fixes, please update your system as soon as possible. You can use the graphical Update Manager tool, or use the following two commands from the Terminal:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
After a standard system upgrade you need to restart Pidgin to effect the necessary changes.