Stefan Bühler discovered that the Debian specific configuration file for lighttpd webserver FastCGI PHP support used a fixed socket name in the world-writable /tmp directory. A symlink attack or a race condition could be exploited by a malicious user on the same machine to take over the PHP control socket and for example force the webserver to use a different PHP version. As the fix is in a configuration file lying in /etc, the update won't be enforced if the file has been modified by the administrator. In that case, care should be taken to manually apply the fix.

For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 1.4.28-2+squeeze1.3. For the testing distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 1.4.31-4. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 1.4.31-4. We recommend that you upgrade your lighttpd packages.

lighttpd is a small webserver and fast webserver developed with security in mind and a lot of features. It has support for * CGI, FastCGI and SSI * virtual hosts * URL rewriting * authentication (plain files, htpasswd, ldap) * transparent content compression * conditional configuration and configuration is straight-forward and easy.

lighttpd on Debian Linux

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

• http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2649.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25