Synopsis:    Low: php-pear security and bug fix update
Issue Date:  2011-12-06
CVE Numbers: CVE-2011-1072


The php-pear package contains the PHP Extension and Application Repository
(PEAR), a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components.

It was found that the "pear" command created temporary files in an insecure
way when installing packages. 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 "pear install"
command. (CVE-2011-1072)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* The php-pear package has been upgraded to version 1.9.4, which provides a
number of bug fixes over the previous version.

* Prior to this update, php-pear created a cache in the
"/var/cache/php-pear/" directory when attempting to list all packages. As a
consequence, php-pear failed to create or update the cache file as a
regular user without sufficient file permissions and could not list all
packages. With this update, php-pear no longer fails if writing to the
cache directory is not permitted. Now, all packages are listed as expected.

All users of php-pear are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
corrects these issues.

SL6:
  noarch
     php-pear-1.9.4-4.el6.noarch.rpm

- Scientific Linux Development Team