| The Topic field indicates exactly what the problem is.
It is basically an introduction to the current security
advisory and notes the utility with the
vulnerability. |
| The Category refers to the affected part of the system
which may be one of core , contrib , or ports . The core
category means that the vulnerability affects a core
component of the FreeBSD operating system. The contrib
category means that the vulnerability affects software
contributed to the FreeBSD Project, such as
sendmail. Finally the ports
category indicates that the vulnerability affects add on
software available as part of the Ports Collection. |
| The Module field refers to the component location, for
instance sys . In this example, we see that the module,
sys , is affected; therefore, this vulnerability
affects a component used within the kernel. |
| The Announced field reflects the date said security
advisory was published, or announced to the world. This
means that the security team has verified that the problem
does exist and that a patch has been committed to the FreeBSD
source code repository. |
| The Credits field gives credit to the individual or
organization who noticed the vulnerability and reported
it. |
| The Affects field explains which releases of FreeBSD are
affected by this vulnerability. For the kernel, a quick
look over the output from ident on the
affected files will help in determining the revision.
For ports, the version number is listed after the port name
in /var/db/pkg . If the system does not
sync with the FreeBSD CVS repository and rebuild
daily, chances are that it is affected. |
| The Corrected field indicates the date, time, time
offset, and release that was corrected. |
| Reserved for the identification information used to look up
vulnerabilities in the Common Vulnerabilities Database system. |
| The Background field gives information on exactly what
the affected utility is. Most of the time this is why
the utility exists in FreeBSD, what it is used for, and a bit
of information on how the utility came to be. |
| The Problem Description field explains the security hole
in depth. This can include information on flawed code, or
even how the utility could be maliciously used to open
a security hole. |
| The Impact field describes what type of impact the
problem could have on a system. For example, this could
be anything from a denial of service attack, to extra
privileges available to users, or even giving the attacker
superuser access. |
| The Workaround field offers a feasible workaround to
system administrators who may be incapable of upgrading
the system. This may be due to time constraints, network
availability, or a slew of other reasons. Regardless,
security should not be taken lightly, and an affected system
should either be patched or the security hole workaround
should be implemented. |
| The Solution field offers instructions on patching the
affected system. This is a step by step tested and verified
method for getting a system patched and working
securely. |
| The Correction Details field displays the
CVS branch or release name with the
periods changed to underscore characters. It also shows
the revision number of the affected files within each
branch. |
| The References field usually offers sources of other
information. This can included web URLs,
books, mailing lists, and newsgroups. |