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Medium · 4.7 CVE-2023-36811 EUVD-2023-0050GHSA-8fjr-hghr-4m99PYSEC-2023-164

Archive spoofing vulnerability in borgbackup

Published Aug 30, 2023 · Updated Feb 13, 2025 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

borgbackup is an opensource, deduplicating archiver with compression and authenticated encryption. A flaw in the cryptographic authentication scheme in borgbackup allowed an attacker to fake archives and potentially indirectly cause backup data loss in the repository. The attack requires an attacker to be able to: 1. insert files (with no additional headers) into backups and 2. gain write access to the repository. This vulnerability does not disclose plaintext to the attacker, nor does it affect the authenticity of existing archives. Creating plausible fake archives may be feasible for empty or small archives, but is unlikely for large archives. The issue has been fixed in borgbackup 1.2.5. Users are advised to upgrade. Additionally to installing the fixed code, users must follow the upgrade procedure as documented in the change log. Data loss after being attacked can be avoided by reviewing the archives (timestamp and contents valid and as expected) after any "borg check --repair" and before "borg prune". There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
borgbackup borg < 1.2.5 —

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
Debian 14 borgbackup 1.2.5-1 —
Debian 13 borgbackup 1.2.5-1 —
Debian 12 borgbackup No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS borgbackup No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS borgbackup No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS borgbackup No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS borgbackup No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS borgbackup No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.22 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.21 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.20 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.19 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.18 borgbackup 1.2.6-r0 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
PyPI borgbackup < 1.2.5 1.2.5 GHSA-8fjr-hghr-4m99

References