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Medium · 5.6 CVE-2020-8833 EUVD-2020-29676GHSA-w9g5-3qgc-xmgx

Apport race condition in crash report permissions

Published Apr 22, 2020 · Updated Sep 16, 2024 · Assigned by canonical

Description

Time-of-check Time-of-use Race Condition vulnerability on crash report ownership change in Apport allows for a possible privilege escalation opportunity. If fs.protected_symlinks is disabled, this can be exploited between the os.open and os.chown calls when the Apport cron script clears out crash files of size 0. A symlink with the same name as the deleted file can then be created upon which chown will be called, changing the file owner to root. Fixed in versions 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.14, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.8 and 2.20.11-0ubuntu22.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Canonical Apport 2.20.1 – < 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23, 2.20.9 – < 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.14, 2.20.11 – < 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.8 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS apport 2.20.11-0ubuntu22 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS apport 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.14 USN-4315-1
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS apport 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23 USN-4315-1
Show 1 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS apport 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.29+esm4 USN-4315-2

Advisories 2

References