CESA-2007:0878: cyrus-sasl security update

Description

Updated cyrus-sasl packages that correct a security issue are now available for CentOS Linux 3. This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The cyrus-sasl package contains the Cyrus implementation of SASL. SASL is the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, a method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols. A bug was found in cyrus-sasl's DIGEST-MD5 authentication mechanism. As part of the DIGEST-MD5 authentication exchange, the client is expected to send a specific set of information to the server. If one of these items (the "realm") was not sent or was malformed, it was possible for a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault) on the server. (CVE-2006-1721) Users of cyrus-sasl should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue.