Lookup: Insecure temporary file creation

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
app-emacs/lookup	< 1.4.1	>= 1.4.1	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #197306

Lookup uses temporary files in an insecure manner, allowing for a symlink attack.

2. Impact Information

Lookup is a search interface to books and dictionnaries for Emacs.

Tatsuya Kinoshita reported that the ndeb-binary function does not handle temporay files correctly.

A local attacker could use a symlink attack to overwrite files with the privileges of the user running Lookup.

3. Resolution Information

There is no known workaround at this time.

All Lookup users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-emacs/lookup-1.4.1"

4. References

Updated December 09, 2007

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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