Ubuntu 11.10-11.04: USN-1372-1 Moderate: Puppet Privilege Escalation

ubuntu

February 23, 2012

Puppet could be made to overwrite files and run programs with administrator privileges.

Summary

Puppet could be made to overwrite files and run programs with administrator

privileges.

Software Description:

- puppet: Centralized configuration management

Details:

It was discovered that Puppet did not drop privileges when executing

commands as different users. If an attacker had control of the execution

manifests or the executed command, this could be used to execute code with

elevated group permissions (typically root). (CVE-2012-1053)

It was discovered that Puppet unsafely opened files when the k5login type

is used to manage files. A local attacker could exploit this to overwrite

arbitrary files and escalate privileges. (CVE-2012-1054)

Topics Covered

security advisory moderate code execution privilege escalation ubuntu puppet

Update Instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package versions:

Ubuntu 11.10:
  puppet-common                   2.7.1-1ubuntu3.5

Ubuntu 11.04:
  puppet-common                   2.6.4-2ubuntu2.8

Ubuntu 10.10:
  puppet-common                   2.6.1-0ubuntu2.6

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
  puppet-common                   0.25.4-2ubuntu6.6

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.