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The Amanda development team confirms the existence of the amrecover security hole in recent versions of Amanda. We have made a new release, Amanda 2.4.0b5, that fixes the amrecover problem and other potential security holes, and is the product of a security audit conducted in conjunction with the OpenBSD effort. The new version is available at:
ftp://ftp.amanda.org/pub/amanda/amanda-2.4.0b5.tar.gz
Here's some more information about the amrecover problem to supplement the information given in the CPIO Security Notice:
The Amanda 2.3.0.x interim releases that introduced amrecover, and the 2.4.0 beta releases by the Amanda team are vulnerable.
Amanda 2.3.0 and earlier UMD releases are not affected by this particular bug, as amrecover was not part of those releases. However, earlier releases do have potential security problems and other bugs, so the Amanda Team recommends upgrading to the new release as soon as practicable.
At an active site running Amanda 2.3.0.x or 2.4.0 beta, amrecover/ amindexd can be disabled by:
removing amandaidx and amidxtape from /etc/inetd.conf
restarting /etc/inetd.conf (kill -HUP should do)
This will avoid this particular vulnerability while continuing to run backups. However, other vulnerabilities might exist, so the Amanda Team recommends upgrading to the new release as soon as practicable.
This release (2.4.0) has addressed a number of security concerns with the assistance of Theo de Raadt, Ejovi Nuwere and David Sacerdote of the OpenBSD project. Thanks guys! Any problems that remain are our own fault, of course.
The Amanda Team would also like to thank the many other people who have contributed suggestions, patches, and new subsystems for Amanda. We're grateful for any contribution that helps us achieve and sustain critical mass for improving Amanda.