Software Update: Pidgin 2.10.10

Version 2.10.10 of Pidgin has been released. This multi-protocol instant messaging program can handle the networks of AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, irc, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, Silc, Simple, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo and Zephyr. During installation, you can choose from as many as seventy different languages ​​and add spell check. Binaries are available for Windows, but the source code can be compiled under Linux. The program also integrates well into Gnome and the KDE SC. The OS X port is released under the name Adium. The changelog shows a large list of changes and improvements.

General

• Check the basic constraints extension when validating SSL/TLS certificates. This fixes a security hole that allowed a malicious man-in-the-middle to impersonate an IM server or any other https endpoint. This affected both the NSS and GnuTLS plugins. (Discovered by an anonymous person and Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor Project, with thanks to Moxie Marlinspike for first publishing about this type of vulnerability. Thanks to Kai Engert for guidance and for some of the NSS changes) (CVE-2014-3694)
• Allow and prefer TLS 1.2 and 1.1 when using the NSS plugin for SSL. (Elrond and Ashish Gupta) (#15909)

libpurple3 compatibility

• Encrypted account passwords are preserved until the new one is set.
• Fix loading Google Talk and Facebook XMPP accounts.

Windows-Specific Changes

• Don’t allow overwriting arbitrary files on the file system when the user installs a smiley theme via drag-and-drop. (Discovered by Yves Younan of Cisco Talos) (CVE-2014-3697)
• Updates to dependencies
  • NSS 3.17.1 and NSPR 4.10.7

Finch

• Fix build against Python 3. (Ed Catmur) (#15969)

Gadu-Gadu

• Updated internal libgadu to version 1.12.0.

groupwise

• Fix potential remote crash parsing server message that indicates that a large amount of memory should be allocated. (Discovered by Yves Younan and Richard Johnson of Cisco Talos) (CVE-2014-3696)

IRC

• Fix a possible leak of unencrypted data when using /me command with OTR. (Thijs Alkemade) (#15750)

MXit

• Fix potential remote crash parsing a malformed emoticon response. (Discovered by Yves Younan and Richard Johnson of Cisco Talos) (CVE-2014-3695)

XMPP

• Fix potential information leak where a malicious XMPP server and possibly even a malicious remote user could create a carefully crafted XMPP message that causes libpurple to send an XMPP message containing arbitrary memory. (Discovered and fixed by Thijs Alkemade and Paul Aurich) (CVE-2014-3698)
• Fix Facebook XMPP roster quirks. (#15041, #15957)

Yahoo

• Fix login when using the GnuTLS library for TLS connections. (#16172)