The webapp-config utility insecurely creates temporary files in a world writable directory, potentially allowing the execution of arbitrary commands.

Announced

2005-06-17

Revised

2007-12-30 (revision 3)

Access

local

Bugs

#91785

Advisory

https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/200506-13

Affected packages

Package	Arch	Vulnerable	Unaffected
app-admin/webapp-config	*	< 1.11	>= 1.11

Background

webapp-config is a Gentoo Linux utility to help manage the installation of web-based applications.

Description

Eric Romang discovered webapp-config uses a predictable temporary filename while processing certain options, resulting in a race condition.

Impact

Successful exploitation of the race condition would allow an attacker to disrupt the operation of webapp-config, or execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the user running webapp-config. A local attacker could use a symlink attack to create or overwrite files with the permissions of the user running webapp-config.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All webapp-config users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-admin/webapp-config-1.11"

References

• CVE-2005-1707