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SuSE: Urgent Advisory on Rsync Vulnerability Affecting Permissions

The security breach occurs when you try to transfer an empty directory into a non-existent directory. In that case rsync sets the permissions of the working directory to those of the empty directory; this means, that the permissions of your home directory are changed to the file access mode of the empty directory if you do a remote rsync by using ssh/rsh. . ______________________________________________________________________________ SuSE Security Announcement Package: rsync-2.2.1 and previous Date: Tue Aug 25 07:45:15 CEST 1999 Affected: all Linux distributions using rsync ______________________________________________________________________________ A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above. Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s). Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue. Please note, that that we provide this information on as "as-is" basis only. There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of the update package. _____________________________________________________________________________ 1. Problem Description The security breach occurs when you try to transfer an empty directory into a non-existent directory. In that case rsync sets the permissions of the working directory to those of the empty directory; this means, that the permissions of your home directory are changed to the file access mode of the empty directory if you do a remote rsync by using ssh/rsh. 2. Impact If an attacker is successful in exploiting this bug, s/he could gain access to protected files in a users home directory. This could lead to local root compromise, i.e. by modifying the PATH environment variable and smuggleing tronjan horse programs inthe admins home directory or elsewhere. 3. Solution Updated the rsync package from our FTP server. ______________________________________________________________________________ Here are the md5 checksums of the upgrade packages, please verify these before installing the new packages: ca7573738420869c7750a25d53e7ac95 rsync-2.3.1-0.i386.rpm ______________________________________________________________________________ You will find the update on our ftp-Server: Webpage for patches: https://www.suse.com/de-de/ or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors: https://www.suse.com/de-de/ ______________________________________________________________________________ . ______________________________________________________________________________ SuSE Security Announc. directory, security, breach, occurs, transfer, empty, non-existent. . Severity: Critical. LinuxSecurity.com Team

Dec 08, 1999 •Critical SuSE