Provided by: debsecan_0.4.19_all 
NAME
debsecan - Debian Security Analyzer
SYNOPSIS
debsecan options...
DESCRIPTION
debsecan analyzes the list of installed packages on the current host and reports vulnerabilities found on
the system.
OPTIONS
--suite count
Choose a specific suite. debsecan produces more informative output (including obsolete packages)
if the correct suite is specified. The release code name has to be used ("sid"), not the temporal
name ("unstable").
--whitelist file
Change the name of the whitelist file.
--add-whitelist, --remove-whitelist, --show-whitelist
Add or remove entries from the whitelist, or print the whitelist to standard output. See the
CHANGING THE WHITELIST section below.
--source url
Override the default download URL for vulnerability data.
--status file
Evaluate a different dpkg status file.
--format format
Change the output format. If format is summary (the default), a short summary for each
vulnerability is printed. The simple format is like the summary format, except that only the bug
packages names are printed. For bugs and packages, debsecan lists the names of vulnerabilities
and binary packages, respectively. --format detail requests a verbose output format, showing all
available data. The report format is used for email reports.
--line-length characters
Specifies the line length in report mode. The default is 72.
--mailto mailbox
The --mailto option instructions debsecan to the send the report to the email address mailbox. No
report is sent if there where no changes since the last invocation with --update-history. This
option requires the --format report output format. The option value may contain macros, see the
section CONFIGURATION FILE MACROS below.
--only-fixed
Only list vulnerabilities for which a fix is available in the archive. Note that it can happen
that a fix is listed, although the package has not been built for the system's architecture and is
not yet available for download. (If you use this option, you also must specify the correct suite
using --suite.)
--no-obsolete
Do not list any obsolete packages (see below). Using this option is not recommended because it
hides real vulnerabilities on some systems, not just false positives.
--history file
Change the name of the history file used by --format report.
--disable-https-check
Turn off certificate validation for HTTPS.
--update-history
Update the vulnerability status information after reporting it using --format report.
--cron Internal option used for invocations from cron. Checks if the vulnerability data has already been
downloaded today. In this case, further processing is skipped. See debsecan-create-cron(8) for
instructions how to create a suitable cron entry.
--config file
Sets the location of the configuration file.
--help Display a short help message and exit.
--version
Display version information and exit.
CONFIGURATION FILE
The configuration file contains the following variables. It follows name=value shell syntax. If value
contains white space, it must be surrounded by double quotes. Some variables may contain macros; see the
section CONFIGURATION FILE MACROS below.
MAILTO Sets the email address to which reports are sent in --cron mode. May contain macros.
REPORT Controls whether debsecan does any processing whatsoever in --cron mode. (Permitted values: true
and false.)
SOURCE Controls the URL from which vulnerability information is fetched. If empty, the built-in default
is used.
SUITE Sets the default value of the --suite option (see there).
SUBJECT
Changes the subject line of reports. May contain macros.
DISABLE_HTTPS_CHECK
Disables HTTPS certificate checking, just like the --disable-https-check command line option.
CONFIGURATION FILE MACROS
Macro processing replaces strings of the form %s(key)s with system-dependent values. Support keys are:
hostname
The host name on which debsecan runs, without the domain name part.
fqdn The fully-qualified domain name of the host on which debsecan runs.
ip The IP address of the host on which debsecan runs. This may be inaccurate on multi-homed systems.
CHANGING THE WHITELIST
You can use the --add-whitelist and --remove-whitelist options to change the whitelist. Whitelisted
vulnerabilities are not included in the reports. For example,
debsecan --add-whitelist CVE-2005-4601
ignores the vulnerability CVE-2005-4601 completely, while
debsecan --add-whitelist CVE-2005-4601 perlmagick
ignores it only as far as the perlmagick is concerned. (This is the same format that is produced by the
--format simple option.) To remove all whitelist entries for the CVE-2005-4601 vulnerability, use:
debsecan --remove-whitelist CVE-2005-4601
If you want to remove an entry for a specific vulnerability/package pair, list the package name
explicitly, as in:
debsecan --remove-whitelist CVE-2005-4601 imagemagick
You can list multiple vulnerability and packages. For example,
debsecan --add-whitelist CVE-2005-4601 \
CVE-2006-0082 imagemagick perlmagick
whitelists CVE-2005-4601 for all packages, and CVE-2006-0082 for the imagemagick and perlmagick packages
only.
CAVEATS
Much like the official Debian security advisories, debsecan's vulnerability tracking is mostly based on
source packages. This can be confusing because tools like dpkg only display binary package names.
Therefore, debsecan displays the more familiar binary package names. This has the unfortunate effect
that all binary packages (including packages containing only documentation, for example) are flagged as
vulnerable, and not only those packages which actually contain the vulnerable code.
If the correct --suite option is specified, debsecan may mark some packages as obsolete. This means that
the binary package in question has been removed from the archive. In this case, you need to update all
the packages depending on the obsolete package, and subsequently remove the obsolete package.
For certain architectures, build daemons may lag considerably. In such case, debsecan may incorrectly
mark a package as fixed, even if an update is not yet available in the Debian archive.
Note that debsecan version uses the --suite option only to determine the availability of corrected
packages and to detect obsolete packages. If you specify the wrong suite, only the information on
available security updates and obsolete packages is wrong, but the list of vulnerabilities is correct.
Mixing packages from different Debian releases is supported, as long as the packages still carry their
official version numbers. Unknown package versions (from backported packages, for example) are compared
to the version in Debian unstable only, which may lead to incorrect reports.
EXAMPLES
This command prints all package names for which security fixes are available:
debsecan --suite suite --format packages --only-fixed
If you pass this output to apt-get, you can download new packages which contain security fixes. For
example, if you are running sid:
apt-get install \
$(debsecan --suite sid --format packages --only-fixed)
The following command can be invoked periodically, to get notifications of new security issues:
debsecan --suite suite --format report \
--update-history --mailto root
See debsecan-create-cron(8) for a tool which creates a suitable cron entry.
ENVIRONMENT
https_proxy
This environment variable instructs debsecan to use a proxy server to fetch the vulnerability
data. It must be of the form http://proxy.example.net:8080/ (mimicking a URL).
FILES
/etc/default/debsecan
Built-in location of the configuration file.
/var/lib/dpkg/status
File from which the package information is fetched by default.
AUTHOR
debsecan was written by Florian Weimer.
SEE ALSO
dpkg(1), debsecan-create-cron(8), apt-get(8)
2005-12-23 DEBSECAN(1)