Jann Horn discovered that users of the CUPS printing system who are part of the lpadmin group could modify several configuration parameters with security impact. Specifically, this allows an attacker to read or write arbitrary files as root which can be used to elevate privileges. This update splits the configuration file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf into two files: cupsd.conf and cups-files.conf. While the first stays configurable via the web interface, the latter can only be configured by the root user. Please see the updated documentation that comes with the new package for more information on these files.

For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 1.4.4-7+squeeze2. For the testing distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 1.5.3-2.7. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 1.5.3-2.7. We recommend that you upgrade your cups packages.

The Common UNIX Printing System (or CUPS(tm)) is a printing system and general replacement for lpd and the like. It supports the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), and has its own filtering driver model for handling various document types.

cups on Debian Linux

This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.

• http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2600.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25