CESA-2005:564: php security update

Description

Updated PHP packages that fix two security issues are now available. This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language commonly used with the Apache HTTP Web server. A bug was discovered in the PEAR XML-RPC Server package included in PHP. If a PHP script is used which implements an XML-RPC Server using the PEAR XML-RPC package, then it is possible for a remote attacker to construct an XML-RPC request which can cause PHP to execute arbitrary PHP commands as the 'apache' user. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2005-1921 to this issue. When using the default SELinux "targeted" policy on CentOS Linux 4, the impact of this issue is reduced since the scripts executed by PHP are constrained within the httpd_sys_script_t security context. A race condition in temporary file handling was discovered in the shtool script installed by PHP. If a third-party PHP module which uses shtool was compiled as root, a local user may be able to modify arbitrary files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2005-1751 to this issue. Users of PHP should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported fixes for these issues.