cdrecord, if manually set SUID root, is vulnerable to a local root exploit allowing users to escalate privileges.

Announced

2004-09-14

Revised

2004-09-14

Access

local

Bugs

#63187

Advisory

https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/200409-18

Affected packages

Package	Arch	Vulnerable	Unaffected
app-cdr/cdrtools	*	<= 2.01_alpha37	>= 2.01_alpha37-r1, >= 2.01_alpha28-r2 (revision)

Background

The cdrtools package is a set of tools for CD recording, including the popular cdrecord command-line utility.

Description

Max Vozeler discovered that the cdrecord utility, when set to SUID root, fails to drop root privileges before executing a user-supplied RSH program. By default, Gentoo does not ship the cdrecord utility as SUID root and therefore is not vulnerable. However, many users (and CD-burning front-ends) set this manually after installation.

Impact

A local attacker could specify a malicious program using the $RSH environment variable and have it executed by the SUID cdrecord, resulting in root privileges escalation.

Workaround

As a workaround, you could remove the SUID rights from your cdrecord utility :

# chmod a-s /usr/bin/cdrecord

Resolution

All cdrtools users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge sync

# emerge -pv ">=app-cdr/cdrtools-2.01_alpha37-r1"
# emerge ">=app-cdr/cdrtools-2.01_alpha37-r1"

References

• CAN-2004-0806