[ GLSA 200410-10 ] gettext: Insecure temporary file handling

GLSA · Last edited by GLSA on Tue May 23, 2006 4:18 am; edited 2 times in total

Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Title: gettext: Insecure temporary file handling (GLSA 200410-10)
Severity: low
Exploitable: local
Date: October 10, 2004
Updated: May 22, 2006
Bug(s): #66355, #85766
ID: 200410-10

Synopsis

The gettext utility is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite or change permissions on arbitrary files with the rights of the user running gettext, which could be the root user.

Background

gettext is a set of utilities for the GNU Translation Project which provides a set of tools and documentation to help produce multi-lingual messages in programs.

Affected Packages

Package: sys-devel/gettext
Vulnerable: < 0.14.1-r1
Unaffected: >= 0.14.1-r1
Unaffected: >= 0.12.1-r2 < 0.12.2
Architectures: All supported architectures

Description

gettext insecurely creates temporary files in world-writeable 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 gettext is called, this would result in file access with the rights of the user running the utility, which could be the root user.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All gettext users should upgrade to the latest version: