Description
FastNetMon Community Edition through 1.2.9 is vulnerable to a local symlink attack via predictable file paths in /tmp. The statistics file path defaults to '/tmp/fastnetmon.dat' (src/fastnetmon.cpp line 159). The print_screen_contents_into_file() function (src/fastnetmon_logic.cpp line 2186) opens this path with std::ios::trunc without checking for symlinks or using O_NOFOLLOW. Additionally, the chmod() call on line 2190 always operates on cli_stats_file_path regardless of which file_path parameter was passed (a bug that applies wrong permissions), and the umask is set to 0 during daemonization (src/fastnetmon.cpp line 1821), making all created files world-writable. A local attacker can exploit this to overwrite arbitrary files as the FastNetMon process user (typically root).
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.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 13 | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 12 | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 26.10 | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)Fewer releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS | fastnetmon | No fix yet | — |