Re: [ GLSA 200903-18 ] Openswan: Insecure temporary file creation

[Robert Buchholz <rbu () gentoo org>]

Hello Paul,

On Monday 09 March 2009, Paul Wouters wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Mar 2009, Robert Buchholz wrote:
> > Subject: [ GLSA 200903-18 ] Openswan: Insecure temporary file
> > creation
>
> Once again, thanks to everyone for not contacting the Openswan
> Project in this matter just like they did not do this 6 months ago
> when this "vulnerability" came out originally.

We often contact upstream about security issues that we are tracking, 
however in this case it seemed to be an error in our ebuild which 
installed a script that was not intended to by upstream.

> > A local attacker could perform symlink attacks to execute arbitrary
> > code and overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user
> > running the application.
>
> The ipsec livetest command was never called or used by anything in
> openswan as it was not finished. Furthermore, it was no longer
> installed AND explicitely disabled since:
>
> commit 4661d345b676d5412a52b6d1289568fc4ab31eac
> Author: Paul Wouters <paul () xelerance com>
> Date:   Fri Nov 21 23:52:38 2008 -0600
>
>      Skip installing livetest
>
> when we added:
>
> $ head -5 programs/livetest/livetest.in
> #!/bin/sh
>
> echo "currently not used"
> exit

True, however this was not the case in our ebuild for 2.4.13-r1 and 
earlier. In current versions we do not install it anymore, which is 
what you have recommended below as well.


> > Workaround
> > ==========
> >
> > There is no known workaround at this time.
>
> The ipsec livetest is not even used by anything within the openswan
> software. It is never called. No parts of openswan are called without
> root privs. This whole thing is moot. Please bury it. Or just remove
> the install of the livetest command in your build environment.
>
> Or just ship a newer version of openswanm like 2.6.20 instead of the
> latest "vulnerable" version in 2.6.16.
>
> > Resolution
> > ==========
> >
> > All Openswan users should upgrade to the latest version:
> >
> >    # emerge --sync
> >    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose
> > ">=net-misc/openswan-2.4.13-r2"
>
> Ahh. gentoo still uses the openswan-2.4.x version which has been EOL
> since early 2008.

The version of a software to move to stable or to remain in unstable 
Gentoo is at the discretion of the maintainer, so I cannot comment on 
the reasons for this.


> Also note that to problematic use was in wget -O. Perhaps one should
> talk to the wget people about symlink attack in their code instead?
>
> Paul


Robert

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