It was discovered that file, a file type classification tool, contains a flaw in the handling of indirect magic rules in the libmagic library, which leads to an infinite recursion when trying to determine the file type of certain files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project ID CVE-2014-1943 has been assigned to identify this flaw. Additionally, other well-crafted files might result in long computation times (while using 100% CPU) and overlong results.

For the oldstable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 5.04-5+squeeze3. For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 5.11-2+deb7u1. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem will be fixed soon. We recommend that you upgrade your file packages.

File tests each argument in an attempt to classify it. There are three sets of tests, performed in this order: filesystem tests, magic number tests, and language tests. The first test that succeeds causes the file type to be printed.

file on Debian Linux

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

• http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2861.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25