[ GLSA 200412-05 ] mirrorselect: Insecure temporary file creation

[GLSA]

Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Title: mirrorselect: Insecure temporary file creation (GLSA 200412-05)
Severity: normal
Exploitable: local
Date: December 07, 2004
Updated: May 22, 2006
Bug(s): #73545
ID: 200412-05

Synopsis

mirrorselect is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files.

Background

mirrorselect is a tool to help select distfiles mirrors for Gentoo.

Affected Packages

Package: app-portage/mirrorselect
Vulnerable: < 0.89
Unaffected: >= 0.89
Architectures: All supported architectures


Description

Ervin Nemeth discovered that mirrorselect creates temporary files in world-writable 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 mirrorselect is executed, this would result in the file being overwritten 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 mirrorselect users should upgrade to the latest version: