Synopsis:    Low: bash security, bug fix, and enhancement update
Issue Date:  2011-07-21
CVE Numbers: CVE-2008-5374


Bash is the default shell for Scientific Linux.

It was found that certain scripts bundled with the Bash documentation
created temporary files in an insecure way. A malicious, local user 
could use this flaw to conduct a symbolic link attack, allowing them to 
overwrite the contents of arbitrary files accessible to the victim 
running the scripts. (CVE-2008-5374)

This update fixes the following bugs:

* When using the source builtin at location ".", occasionally, bash
opted to preserve internal consistency and abort scripts. This caused
bash to abort scripts that assigned values to read-only variables.
This is now fixed to ensure that such scripts are now executed as
written and not aborted.

* When the tab key was pressed for auto-completion options for the typed
text, the cursor moved to an unexpected position on a previous line if
the prompt contained characters that cannot be viewed and a "\]". This
is now fixed to retain the cursor at the expected position at the end of
the target line after autocomplete options correctly display.

* Bash attempted to interpret the NOBITS .dynamic section of the ELF
header. This resulted in a "^D: bad ELF interpreter: No such
file or directory" message. This is fixed to ensure that the invalid
"^D" does not appear in the error message.

* The $RANDOM variable in Bash carried over values from a previous
execution for later jobs. This is fixed and the $RANDOM variable
generates a new random number for each use.

* When Bash ran a shell script with an embedded null character, bash's
source builtin parsed the script incorrectly. This is fixed and
bash's source builtin correctly parses shell script null characters.


* The bash manual page for "trap" did not mention that signals ignored 
upon entry cannot be listed later. The manual page was updated for this 
update and now specifically notes that "Signals ignored upon entry to 
the shell cannot be trapped, reset or listed".

* Bash's readline incorrectly displayed additional text when resizing
the terminal window when text spanned more than one line, which caused
incorrect display output. This is now fixed to ensure that text in more
than one line in a resized window displays as expected.

* Previously, bash incorrectly displayed "Broken pipe" messages for
builtins like "echo" and "printf" when output did not succeed due to
EPIPE. This is fixed to ensure that the unnecessary "Broken pipe"
messages no longer display.

* Inserts with the repeat function were not possible after a deletion in
vi-mode. This has been corrected and, with this update, the repeat 
function works as expected after a deletion.

* In some situations, bash incorrectly appended "/" to files instead of
just directories during tab-completion, causing incorrect
auto-completions. This is fixed and auto-complete appends "/" only to
directories.

* Bash had a memory leak in the "read" builtin when the number of fields
being read was not equal to the number of variables passed as arguments,
causing a shell script crash. This is fixed to prevent a memory leak and
shell script crash.

* /usr/share/doc/bash-3.2/loadables in the bash package contained source
files which would not build due to missing C header files. With this
update, the unusable (and unbuildable) source files were removed from 
the package.

This update also adds the following enhancement:

* The system-wide "/etc/bash.bash_logout" bash logout file is now 
enabled. This allows administrators to write system-wide logout actions 
for all users.

Users of bash are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
contains backported patches to resolve these issues and add this
enhancement.

SL5:
   i386
      bash-3.2-32.el5.i386.rpm
   x86_64
      bash-3.2-32.el5.x86_64.rpm

- Scientific Linux Development Team