Portage, Gentoolkit: Temporary file vulnerabilities — GLSA 200411-13

dispatch-conf (included in Portage) and qpkg (included in Gentoolkit) are vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files with the rights of the user running the script.

Affected packages

sys-apps/portage on all architectures
Affected versions <= 2.0.51-r2
Unaffected versions >= 2.0.51-r3
app-portage/gentoolkit on all architectures
Affected versions <= 0.2.0_pre10
Unaffected versions >= 0.2.0_pre10-r1
revision >= 0.2.0_pre8-r1

Background

Portage is Gentoo's package management tool. The dispatch-conf utility allows for easy rollback of configuration file changes and automatic updates of configurations files never modified by users. Gentoolkit is a collection of Gentoo specific administration scripts, one of which is the portage querying tool qpkg.

Description

dispatch-conf and qpkg use predictable filenames for temporary files.

Impact

A local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When an affected script is called, this would result in the file to be overwritten with the rights of the user running the dispatch-conf or qpkg, which could be the root user.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Portage users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=sys-apps/portage-2.0.51-r3"

All Gentoolkit users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.0_pre8-r1"

References

Release date
November 07, 2004

Latest revision
May 22, 2006: 02

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries