rxvt-unicode: Buffer overflow

Background

rxvt-unicode is a clone of the well known terminal emulator rxvt.

Description

Rob Holland of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team discovered that rxvt-unicode fails to properly check input length.

Impact

Successful exploitation would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running rxvt-unicode.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All rxvt-unicode users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=x11-terms/rxvt-unicode-5.3"