GnuTLS 2.6.2 - Brown paper bag release

Simon Josefsson simon at josefsson.org
Wed Nov 12 15:45:34 CET 2008


We are proud to announce a new stable GnuTLS release: Version 2.6.2.

GnuTLS is a modern C library that implement the standard network
security protocol Transport Layer Security (TLS), for use by network
applications.  GnuTLS is developed for GNU/Linux, but works on many
Unix-like systems and comes with a binary installer for Windows.

The GnuTLS library is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser
General Public License version 2.1 (or later).  The "extra" GnuTLS
library (which contains TLS/IA support, LZO compression and Libgcrypt
FIPS-mode handler), the OpenSSL compatibility library, the self tests
and the command line tools are all distributed under the GNU General
Public License version 3.0 (or later).  The manual is distributed under
the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 (or later).

The project page of the library is available at:
  http://www.gnutls.org/
  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/

What's New
==========

Version 2.6.2 is a maintenance release on our stable branch.

* Version 2.6.2 (released 2008-11-12)

** libgnutls: Fix crash in X.509 validation code for self-signed certificates.
The patch to fix the security problem GNUTLS-SA-2008-3 introduced a
problem for certificate chains that contained just one self-signed
certificate.  Reported by Michael Meskes <meskes at debian.org> in
<http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=505279>.

** API and ABI modifications:
No changes since last version.

Getting the Software
====================

GnuTLS may be downloaded from one of the mirror sites or direct from
<ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnutls/>.  The list of mirrors can be found at
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/download.html>.

Here are the BZIP2 compressed sources (4.9MB):

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnutls/gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnutls/gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2

Here are OpenPGP detached signatures signed using key 0xB565716F:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnutls/gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2.sig
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnutls/gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2.sig

Note, that we don't distribute gzip compressed tarballs.

In order to check that the version of GnuTLS which you are going to
install is an original and unmodified one, you should verify the OpenPGP
signature.  You can use the command

     gpg --verify gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2.sig

This checks whether the signature file matches the source file.  You
should see a message indicating that the signature is good and made by
that signing key.  Make sure that you have the right key, either by
checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources or by checking
that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other key.  The signing
key can be identified with the following information:

pub   1280R/B565716F 2002-05-05 [expires: 2009-04-21]
      Key fingerprint = 0424 D4EE 81A0 E3D1 19C6  F835 EDA2 1E94 B565 716F
uid                  Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org>
uid                  Simon Josefsson <jas at extundo.com>
sub   1280R/4D5D40AE 2002-05-05 [expires: 2009-04-21]

The key is available from:
  http://josefsson.org/key.txt
  dns:b565716f.josefsson.org?TYPE=CERT

Alternatively, after successfully verifying the OpenPGP signature of
this announcement, you could verify that the files match the following
checksum values.  The values are for SHA-1 and SHA-224 respectively:

2c7701b61c86d5cec8305f8741bc18bc64f33b31  gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2

7783486a33d91eb4872c8f9a51f91bdc928651b6e2d4a0ffb656cb87  gnutls-2.6.2.tar.bz2

Documentation
=============

The manual is available online at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/documentation.html

In particular the following formats are available:

 HTML: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/manual/html_node/index.html
 PDF: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/manual/gnutls.pdf

For developers there is a GnuTLS API reference manual formatted using
the GTK-DOC tools:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/reference/gnutls-gnutls.html

Community
=========

If you need help to use GnuTLS, or want to help others, you are invited
to join our help-gnutls mailing list, see:

  http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnutls

If you wish to participate in the development of GnuTLS, you are invited
to join our gnutls-dev mailing list, see:

  http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnutls-devel

Windows installer
=================

GnuTLS has been ported to the Windows operating system, and a binary
installer is available.  The installer contains DLLs for application
development, manuals, examples, and source code.  The installer uses
libgpg-error v1.6, libgcrypt v1.4.3, libtasn1 v1.5, and GnuTLS v2.6.2.

For more information about GnuTLS for Windows:
  http://josefsson.org/gnutls4win/

The Windows binary installer and PGP signature:
  http://josefsson.org/gnutls4win/gnutls-2.6.2.exe (14MB)
  http://josefsson.org/gnutls4win/gnutls-2.6.2.exe.sig

The checksum values for SHA-1 and SHA-224 are:

5f870f13d96965669598917b82f531825dcc6810  gnutls-2.6.2.exe

d2b9b3a153ed45d1262fe38217e3c40dd04500e654b3cbb0f8ce3107  gnutls-2.6.2.exe

Thanks to Enrico Tassi, we also have mingw32 *.deb's available:
  http://josefsson.org/gnutls4win/mingw32-gnutls_2.6.2-1_all.deb

The checksum values for SHA-1 and SHA-224 are:

577d2d9df6d0de1b2cd0bca152ad9b3f0f75d171  mingw32-gnutls_2.6.2-1_all.deb

f7342095ba15f9b6c9c3176b27ba3491548bef33d32dffe780b20788  mingw32-gnutls_2.6.2-1_all.deb

Internationalization
====================

GnuTLS messages have been translated into Dutch, French, German,
Malay, Polish, Swedish, and Vietnamese.  We welcome the addition of
more translations.

Support
=======

Improving GnuTLS is costly, but you can help!  We are looking for
organizations that find GnuTLS useful and wish to contribute back.
You can contribute by reporting bugs, improve the software, or donate
money or equipment.

Commercial support contracts for GnuTLS are available, and they help
finance continued maintenance.  Simon Josefsson Datakonsult, a
Stockholm based privately held company, is currently funding GnuTLS
maintenance.  We are always looking for interesting development
projects.  See http://josefsson.org/ for more details.

The GnuTLS service directory is available at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/commercial.html

Security Patch
==============

The following patch can be used if you use releases older than v2.6.1,
or if you don't want to upgrade to v2.6.2.  It fixes the
GNUTLS-SA-2008-3 aka CVE-2008-4989 vulnerability and the crash that was
triggered by the patch used to fix the vulnerability in v2.6.1.  The
patch was created against v2.6.0.

--- lib/x509/verify.c-	2008-11-12 15:39:53.000000000 +0100
+++ lib/x509/verify.c	2008-11-12 15:40:18.000000000 +0100
@@ -412,17 +412,6 @@
     }
 #endif
 
-  /* Check if the last certificate in the path is self signed.
-   * In that case ignore it (a certificate is trusted only if it
-   * leads to a trusted party by us, not the server's).
-   */
-  if (gnutls_x509_crt_check_issuer (certificate_list[clist_size - 1],
-				    certificate_list[clist_size - 1]) > 0
-      && clist_size > 0)
-    {
-      clist_size--;
-    }
-
   /* Verify the certificate path (chain) 
    */
   for (i = clist_size - 1; i > 0; i--)

Happy Hacking,
Simon
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 419 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20081112/f58aab7b/attachment.pgp>


More information about the Gnutls-devel mailing list