USN-71-1: PostgreSQL vulnerability

Publication date

1 February 2005

Overview

PostgreSQL vulnerability

Releases


Details

John Heasman discovered a local privilege escalation in the PostgreSQL
server. Any user could use the LOAD extension to load any shared
library into the PostgreSQL server; the library's initialisation
function was then executed with the permissions of the server.

Now the use of LOAD is restricted to the database superuser (usually
'postgres').

Note: Since there is no way for normal database users to create
arbitrary files, this vulnerability is not exploitable remotely, e. g.
by uploading a shared library in the form of a Binary Large Object
(BLOB) to a public web server.

John Heasman discovered a local privilege escalation in the PostgreSQL
server. Any user could use the LOAD extension to load any shared
library into the PostgreSQL server; the library's initialisation
function was then executed with the permissions of the server.

Now the use of LOAD is restricted to the database superuser (usually
'postgres').

Note: Since there is no way for normal database users to create
arbitrary files, this vulnerability is not exploitable remotely, e. g.
by uploading a shared library in the form of a Binary Large Object
(BLOB) to a public web server.

Update instructions

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
4.10 warty postgresql – 

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