[Xastir-Dev] Possible temp file handling bug in ImageMagick <5.5.7

[Bill Owens N2RKL]

Debian released a patched version of ImageMagick over the weekend,
saying the following:

imagemagick's libmagick library, under certain circumstances, creates
temporary files without taking appropriate security precautions.  This
vulnerability could be exploited by a local user to create or
overwrite files with the privileges of another user who is invoking a
program using this library.

For the stable distribution (woody) this problem has been fixed in
version 4:5.4.4.5-1woody1.


I'm not sure how big a deal this is, or exactly when it was fixed. However
there's a line in the release notes for 5.5.7 that may refer to it:

  * Added a temporary file manager that prevents race conditions and
    removes any remaining files on exit.

I also don't know how badly other things will break if you try to go
to 5.5.7 :( Luckily temp file creation problems are local issues, so if
you trust all the users on your machine you're probably OK. . .

Bill N2RKL