Apache HTTP Server 1.3.28 Released

The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.28 of the Apache HTTP Server ("Apache"). This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.28 as compared to 1.3.27.

This version of Apache is principally a bug and security fix release.
A partial summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this
document.
A full listing of changes can be found in the CHANGES file. Of
particular note is that 1.3.28 addresses and fixes 3 potential
security issues:

o CAN-2003-0460 (cve.mitre.org): Fix the rotatelogs supportprogram
on Win32 and OS/2 to ignore special controlcharacters received over
the pipe. Previously such characters couldcause it to quit logging
and exit. We would like to thank the HitachiIncident Response team
for their responsible disclosure of this issue.

o VU#379828 : The server could crash when going into an infinite
loop due to too many subsequent internal redirectsand nested
subrequests.

o Eliminated leaks of several file descriptors to childprocesses,
such as CGI scripts.

We consider Apache 1.3.28 to be the best version of Apache 1.3
available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions,especially of
the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. Nofurther
releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.

Apache 1.3.28 is available for download from

http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
- or -
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/

Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the samedirectory for a full list
of changes.

Binary distributions are available from

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/

The source and binary distributions are alsoavailable via any of the
mirrors listed at

http://www.apache.org/mirrors/

As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain allstandard Apache
modules as shared objects (if supported by theplatform) and include
full source code. Installation is easily doneby executing the
included install script. See theREADME.bindist and INSTALL.bindist
files for a complete explanation. Please notethat the binary
distributions are only provided for your convenienceand current
distributions for specific platforms are not alwaysavailable. Win32
binary distributions are based on the MicrosoftInstaller (.MSI)
technology. While development continues tomake this installation
method
more robust, questions should be directed to the
news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windowsnewsgroup.

For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2please see

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html

In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantialimprovements over
version 1.2, including better performance,reliability and a wider
range of supported platforms, including Windows NTand 2000 (which
fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPEthreaded
platforms.

Apache is the most popular web server in the knownuniverse; over
half
of the servers on the Internet are running Apache orone of its
variants.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APACHE USERS: Apache1.3 was designed for Unix
OS
variants. While the ports to non-Unixplatforms (such as Win32,
Netware
or OS2) are of an acceptable quality, Apache 1.3 isnot optimized for
these platforms. Security, stability, orperformance issues on these
non-Unix ports do not generally apply to the Unixversion, due to
software's Unix origin.

Apache 2.0 has been structured for multipleoperating systems from
its
inception, by introducing the Apache PortabilityLibrary and MPM
modules.
Users on non-Unix platforms are strongly encouragedto move up to
Apache 2.0 for better performance, stability andsecurity on their
platforms.

Apache 1.3.28 Major changes

Security vulnerabilities

* CAN-2003-0460 (cve.mitre.org): Fix therotatelogs support
program on
Win32 and OS/2 to ignorespecial control characters received
over the
pipe. Previously suchcharacters could cause it to quit logging
and
exit. We would like tothank the Hitachi Incident Response team
for
their responsible disclosureof this issue.

* VU#379828 : The server could crashwhen going into an infinite
loop
due to too many subsequentinternal redirects and nested
subrequests.

* Eliminated leaks of several filedescriptors to child processes,
such
as CGI scripts.

New features

The main new features in 1.3.28 (compared to 1.3.27)are:

* Added new ap_register_cleanup_ex() APIfunction which allows
for a "magic" cleanupfunction to be run at register time
rather than at cleanup time.

* Improvements to mod_usertrack thatallows for a regular (verbose)
as well as "compact" versionof the tracking cookie (the new
'CookieFormat' directive),and the ability to prepend a string
to the cookie via the'CookiePrefix' directive.

New features that relate to specific platforms:

* Introduce Win32 .pdb diagnosticsymbols into the Apache 1.3 build
(as created in Apache 2.0.45and later.) which makes debugging
and
analysis of crash dumps andDr. Watson logs trivial.

* AIX: Change the default accept mutexmechanism from pthread back
to
fcntl.

Bugs fixed

The following noteworthy bugs were found in Apache1.3.27 (or
earlier)
and have been fixed in Apache 1.3.28:

* Make sure the accept mutex is releasedbefore calling child exit
hooks and cleanups.

* Fix mod_rewrite's handling of absoluteURIs. The escaping
routines
now work scheme dependentand the query string will only be
appended if supported by theparticular scheme.

* Prevent obscenely large values ofprecision in ap_vformatter
from clobbering a buffer.

* Update timeout algorithm infree_proc_chain. If a subprocess
did not exit immediately,the thread would sleep for 3 seconds
before checking thesubprocess exit status again. In a very
common case when thesubprocess was an HTTP server CGI script,
the CGI script actuallyexited a fraction of a second into the 3
second sleep, whicheffectively limited the server to serving one
CGI request every 3 secondsacross a persistent connection.