A patch is provided against emacs 20.6, though it requires glibc 2.1. XFree86 server overflow . Michal Zalewski posted a report of a buffer overflow in XFree86 which he is confident can be exploited. The followup messages to this posting, however, did not confirm the problem, either with vanilla XFree86 3.3.6, 4.0.0 or the XFree86 package as shipped with Red Hat 6.2. We'll post additional information as it becomes available.
Debates are nothing new in the security arena.
This week, an overflow in imapd 4.7 was reported. This can be used to gain access to the mail account of an imapd user - a problem if a mail client is not supposed to have interactive access to the server. The usual discussions and workarounds are posted, but then followed later by a debate on whether or not the problem really needed to be fixed, since it did not allow unprivileged access. In this case, it is to be hoped that the problem will be repaired, not just documented. A denial of service vulnerability in the X font server under Red Hat 6.X has been reported .