mirrorselect: Insecure temporary file creation

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200412-05 / mirrorselect
Release Date	December 07, 2004
Latest Revision	May 22, 2006: 04
Impact	normal
Exploitable	local

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
app-portage/mirrorselect	< 0.89	>= 0.89	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #73545

Synopsis

mirrorselect is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files.

2. Impact Information

Background

mirrorselect is a tool to help select distfiles mirrors for Gentoo.

Description

Ervin Nemeth discovered that mirrorselect creates temporary files in world-writable directories with predictable names.

Impact

A local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When mirrorselect is executed, this would result in the file being overwritten with the rights of the user running the utility, which could be the root user.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All mirrorselect users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-portage/mirrorselect-0.89"

4. References

CVE-2004-1167

Updated December 07, 2004

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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