AWStats Security advisory (critical)

remote command execution vulnerability

[amznVibe]

Please be advised, the extremely popular AWStats program before version 6.3 apparently has a big security hole:
[lists.netsys.com...]

Warning, a security hole was recently found in AWStats versions from 5.0 to 6.2 when AWStats is used as a CGI: A remote user can execute arbitrary commands on your server using permissions of your web server user (in most cases user "nobody").
If you use AWStats with another version or with option AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser to 0, you are safe. If not, it is highly recommended to update to 6.3 version that fix this security hole.

PHPbb was taken down [phpbb.com] using the above technique as well as several large blogs.

More info also available at netcraft, article [news.netcraft.com].

Update here: [awstats.sourceforge.net...]

[Livenomadic]

Ya, my hosting turned off my ability to view AWstats a yesterday (however the stats are still being collected).

Couldn't of come at a worse time because I am seeing some crazy adsense stats and wanted to see what is going on.