USN-870-1: PyGreSQL vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 8.04

Packages

• pygresql -

Details

Steffen Joeris discovered that PyGreSQL 3.8 did not use PostgreSQL's safe
string and bytea functions in its own escaping functions. As a result,
applications written to use PyGreSQL's escaping functions are vulnerable to
SQL injections when processing certain multi-byte character sequences.
Because the safe functions require a database connection, to maintain
backwards compatibility, pg.escape_string() and pg.escape_bytea() are still
available, but applications will have to be adjusted to use the new
pyobj.escape_string() and pyobj.escape_bytea() functions. For example, code
containing:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = pg.escape_string(untrusted_input)

should be adjusted to use:

import pg
connection = pg.connect(...)
escaped = connection.escape_string(untrusted_input)

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 8.10

• python-pygresql - 1:3.8.1-3ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 8.04

• python-pygresql - 1:3.8.1-2ubuntu0.1

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.

References

• CVE-2009-2940