Apache 1.3.26 Released

   The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are
   pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.26 of the Apache HTTP
   Server.  This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.26.
   Apache 1.3.25 was not released.

   This version of Apache is principally a security and bug fix
   release.  A summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this document.
   Of particular note is that 1.3.26 addresses and fixes the issues noted
   in CAN-2002-0392 (mitre.org) [CERT VU#944335] regarding a vulnerability
   in the handling of chunked transfer encoding.  We would like to thank
   Mark Litchfield of ngssoftware.com for discovering and reporting the
   vulnerability.

   We consider Apache 1.3.26 to be the best version of Apache 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.  No further
   releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.

   Apache 1.3.26 is available for download from
   
       http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/

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

   Binary distributions are available from

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

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

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

   As of Apache 1.3.17, Win32 binary distributions are now based on the
   Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology.  This change occurred in order to
   resolve the many problems WinME and Win2K users experienced with the
   older InstallShield-based installer.exe file.  While development
   continues to make this new installation method more robust, questions
   should be directed at the news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows
   newsgroup.

   As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache
   modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include
   full source code.  Installation is easily done by executing the
   included install script.  See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist
   files for a complete explanation.  Please note that the binary
   distributions are only provided for your convenience and current
   distributions for specific platforms are not always available.

   For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see
   
   http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html

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

   Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half
   of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its
   variants.

   IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WIN32 USERS: Over the years, many users have come
   to trust Apache as a secure and stable server.  It must be realized
   that the current Win32 code has not yet reached the levels of the Unix
   version, but is of acceptable quality.  Win32 stability or security
   problems do not reflect on the Unix version.

                     Apache 1.3.26 Major changes

  Security vulnerabilities

     * Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0392 (mitre.org)
       regarding the handling of chunked transfer encoding.

  New features

   The main new features in 1.3.26 (compared to 1.3.24) are:

     * Add some popular types to the mime types magic file.

   New features that relate to specific platforms:

     * Unix: Added a '-F' flag which causes the supervisor process to
       no longer fork down and detach and instead stay attached to
       the tty - thus making live for automatic restart and exit checking
       code easier.

  Bugs fixed

   The following bugs were found in Apache 1.3.24 (or earlier) and have
   been fixed in Apache 1.3.26:

     * Allow child processes sufficient time for cleanups but making
       ap_select in reclaim_child_processes more "resistant" to
       signal interupts.

     * Fix for a problem in mod_rewrite which would lead to 400 Bad Request
       responses for rewriting rules which resulted in a local path.
       Note: This will also reject invalid requests as issued by
       Netscape-4.x Roaming Profiles (on a DAV-enabled server)

     * Recognize platform-specific root directories (other than
       leading slash) in mod_rewrite for filename rewrite rules.

     * Disallow anything but whitespace on the request line after the
       HTTP/x.y protocol string to prevent arbitrary user input from
       ending up in the access_log and error_log.  Also control characters
       are now escaped.

     * A large number of fixes in mod_proxy including: adding support
       for dechunking chunked responses, correcting a timeout problem
       which would force long or slow POST requests to close after 300
       seconds, adding "X-Forwarded" headers, dealing correctly with the
       multiple-cookie header bug, ability to handle unexpected
       100-continue responses sent during PUT or POST commands, and a
       change to tighten up the Server header overwrite bugfix.