Security Information

Debian takes security very seriously. We handle all security problems brought to our attention and ensure that they are corrected within a reasonable timeframe. Many advisories are coordinated with other free software vendors and are published the same day a vulnerability is made public and we also have a Security Audit team that reviews the archive looking for new or unfixed security bugs.

Experience has shown that security through obscurity does not work. Public disclosure allows for more rapid and better solutions to security problems. In that vein, this page addresses Debian's status with respect to various known security holes, which could potentially affect Debian.

Debian also participates in security standardization efforts: the Debian Security Advisories are CVE-Compatible (review the cross references) and Debian is represented in the Board of the Open Vulnerability Assessment Language project.

Keeping your Debian system secure

In order to receive the latest Debian security advisories, subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list.

You can use apt to easily get the latest security updates. This requires a line such as

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

For more information about security issues in Debian, please refer to the Security Team FAQ and a manual called Securing Debian.

Recent Advisories

These web pages include a condensed archive of security advisories posted to the debian-security-announce list.

[04 Feb 2010] DSA-1992 chrony
several vulnerabilities
[04 Feb 2010] DSA-1991 squid/squid3
denial of service
[03 Feb 2010] DSA-1990 trac-git
shell command injection
[02 Feb 2010] DSA-1989 fuse
denial of service
[02 Feb 2010] DSA-1988 qt4-x11
several vulnerabilities
[02 Feb 2010] DSA-1987 lighttpd
denial of service
[02 Feb 2010] DSA-1986 moodle
several vulnerabilities
[31 Jan 2010] DSA-1985 sendmail
insufficient input validation
[30 Jan 2010] DSA-1984 libxerces2-java
denial of service
[30 Jan 2010] DSA-1983 wireshark
several vulnerabilities
[29 Jan 2010] DSA-1982 hybserv
denial of service
[28 Jan 2010] DSA-1981 maildrop
privilege escalation
[27 Jan 2010] DSA-1980 ircd-hybrid/ircd-ratbox
integer underflow/denial of service
[27 Jan 2010] DSA-1979 lintian
multiple vulnerabilities
[26 Jan 2010] DSA-1978 phpgroupware
several vulnerabilities
[25 Jan 2010] DSA-1977 python2.4 python2.5
several vulnerabilities
[22 Jan 2010] DSA-1976 dokuwiki
several vulnerabilities
[20 Jan 2010] DSA-1974 gzip
several vulnerabilities
[19 Jan 2010] DSA-1973 glibc, eglibc
information disclosure
[17 Jan 2010] DSA-1972 audiofile
buffer overflow
[15 Jan 2010] DSA-1971 libthai
integer overflow
[13 Jan 2010] DSA-1970 openssl
denial of service
[12 Jan 2010] DSA-1969 krb5
integer underflow

The latest Debian security advisories are also available in RDF format. We also offer a second file that includes the first paragraph of the corresponding advisory so you can see in it what the advisory is about.

The older security advisories are also available:

Debian distributions are not vulnerable to all security problems. The Debian Security Tracker collects all information about the vulnerability status of Debian packages, and can be searched by CVE name or by package.

Contact information

Please read the Security Team FAQ before contacting us, your question may well be answered there already!

The contact information is in the FAQ as well.