[ GLSA 200504-06 ] sharutils: Insecure temporary file creation

[GLSA]

Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Title: sharutils: Insecure temporary file creation (GLSA 200504-06)
Severity: normal
Exploitable: local
Date: April 06, 2005
Bug(s): #87939
ID: 200504-06

Synopsis

The unshar utility is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files.

Background

sharutils is a collection of tools to deal with shar archives.

Affected Packages

Package: app-arch/sharutils
Vulnerable: < 4.2.1-r11
Unaffected: >= 4.2.1-r11
Architectures: All supported architectures


Description

Joey Hess has discovered that the program unshar, which is a part of sharutils, creates temporary files in a world-writable directory 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 unshar 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 sharutils users should upgrade to the latest version: