Back In Time: Command injection — GLSA 201801-06

A command injection vulnerability in 'Back in Time' may allow for the execution of arbitrary shell commands.

Affected packages

app-backup/backintime on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.1.24
Unaffected versions >= 1.1.24

Background

A simple backup tool for Linux, inspired by “flyback project”.

Description

‘Back in Time’ did improper escaping/quoting of file paths used as arguments to the ‘notify-send’ command leading to some parts of file paths being executed as shell commands within an os.system call.

Impact

A context-dependent attacker could execute arbitrary shell commands via a specially crafted file.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All ‘Back In Time’ users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-backup/backintime-1.1.24"
 

References

Release date
January 07, 2018

Latest revision
January 07, 2018: 1

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local, remote

Bugzilla entries