LMBench: Insecure temporary file usage — GLSA 200909-10

Multiple insecure temporary file usage issues have been reported in LMBench, allowing for symlink attacks.

Affected packages

app-benchmarks/lmbench on all architectures
Affected versions <= 3
Unaffected versions

Background

LMBench is a suite of simple, portable benchmarks for UNIX platforms.

Description

Dmitry E. Oboukhov reported that the rccs and STUFF scripts do not handle "/tmp/sdiff.#####" temporary files securely. NOTE: There might be further occurances of insecure temporary file usage.

Impact

A local attacker could perform symlink attacks to overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

LMBench has been removed from Portage. We recommend that users unmerge LMBench:

 # emerge --unmerge app-benchmarks/lmbench

References

Release date
September 09, 2009

Latest revision
September 09, 2009: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries