TRAMP: Insecure temporary file creation — GLSA 200710-22

The TRAMP package for GNU Emacs insecurely creates temporary files.

Affected packages

Package	app-emacs/tramp on all architectures
Affected versions	< 2.1.10-r2
Unaffected versions	>= 2.1.10-r2 < 2.1

Background

TRAMP is a remote file editing package for GNU Emacs, a highly extensible and customizable text editor.

Description

Stefan Monnier discovered that the tramp-make-tramp-temp-file() function creates temporary files in an insecure manner.

Impact

A local attacker could create symbolic links in the directory where the temporary files are written, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem that is writable by the user running TRAMP. When TRAMP writes the temporary file, the target valid file would then be overwritten with the contents of the TRAMP temporary file.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All TRAMP users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-emacs/tramp-2.1.10-r2"

References

CVE-2007-5377

Release date
October 20, 2007

Latest revision
December 30, 2007: 02

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries

194713