New Wireshark version addresses vulnerabilities

Wireshark is the world’s foremost network protocol analyzer, and is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions.

Wireshark 1.0.6 fixes the following vulnerabilities:

• On non-Windows systems, Wireshark could crash if the HOME environment variable contained sprintf-style string formatting characters. Discovered by babi. (Bug 3150) Versions affected: 0.99.8 to 1.0.5
• Wireshark could crash while reading a malformed NetScreen snoop file. Discovered by babi. (Bug 3151) Versions affected: 0.99.7 to 1.0.5
• Wireshark could crash while reading a Tektronix K12 text capture file. (Bug 1937) Versions affected: 0.99.6 to 1.0.5

If are running Wireshark 1.0.5 or earlier (including Ethereal 0.99.0) and cannot upgrade to 1.0.6, you can work around each of the problems listed above by doing the following:

• For each user that will run Wireshark (including root if you’re running Wireshark as a privileged user), make sure the HOME environment variable doesnt’ contain any “%” characters.
• Don’t open any Tektronix K12 text or NetScreen capture files.