1.163.2. RHSA-2011:0327: Moderate subversion security and bug fix update

Updated subversion packages that fix one security issue and one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Subversion (SVN) is a concurrent version control system which enables one or more users to collaborate in developing and maintaining a hierarchy of files and directories while keeping a history of all changes. The mod_dav_svn module is used with the Apache HTTP Server to allow access to Subversion repositories via HTTP.

A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way the mod_dav_svn module processed certain requests to lock working copy paths in a repository. A remote attacker could issue a lock request that could cause the httpd process serving the request to crash. (CVE-2011-0715)

Red Hat would like to thank Hyrum Wright of the Apache Subversion project for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Philip Martin, WANdisco, Inc. as the original reporter.

This update also fixes the following bug:

* A regression was found in the handling of repositories which do not have a "db/fsfs.conf" file. The "svnadmin hotcopy" command would fail when trying to produce a copy of such a repository. This command has been fixed to ignore the absence of the "fsfs.conf" file. The "svnadmin hotcopy" command will now succeed for this type of repository. (BZ#681522)

All Subversion users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. After installing the updated packages, you must restart the httpd daemon, if you are using mod_dav_svn, for the update to take effect.