B.23.2. RHSA-2010:0889 — Important: freetype security update
Updated freetype packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, and 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
FreeType is a free, high-quality, portable font engine that can open and manage font files. It also loads, hints, and renders individual glyphs efficiently. The freetype packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 provide both the FreeType 1 and FreeType 2 font engines. The freetype packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 provide only the FreeType 2 font engine.
- CVE-2010-3855
- A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way the FreeType font rendering engine processed certain TrueType GX fonts. If a user loaded a specially-crafted font file with an application linked against FreeType, it could cause the application to crash or, possibly, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application.
Note
Note: This issue only affects the FreeType 2 font engine.
Users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue. The X server must be restarted (log out, then log back in) for this update to take effect.
