Mathematica on Linux /tmp/MathLink vulnerability

2010-05-26 / 2010-05-27
Credit: paul szabo
Risk: Low
Local: Yes
Remote: No
CWE: CWE-59


CVSS Base Score: 1.9/10
Impact Subscore: 2.9/10
Exploitability Subscore: 3.4/10
Exploit range: Local
Attack complexity: Medium
Authentication: No required
Confidentiality impact: None
Integrity impact: Partial
Availability impact: None

"If you're doing anything technical, think Mathematica --..." http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html Mathematica7 on Linux uses the /tmp/MathLink directory in insecure ways. Mathematica creates or re-uses an existing /tmp/MathLink directory, and overwrites files within and follows symlinks. This type of behaviour is "known unsafe" on multi-user machines e.g. University login servers. As a classic example of a symlink attack, if an "attacker" uses: mkdir /tmp/MathLink; ln -s /home/victim/.bashrc /tmp/MathLink/.gshmm then when the victim runs Mathematica his ~/.bashrc will be clobbered. New files are created world-writable, allowing a complete compromise of the user account by linking to ~/.bash_logout . (If root ever uses Mathematica then the damage is greater.) Mathematica uses also /tmp/fonts$$.conf in insecure ways. Workaround: use command-line math instead of pretty interface. Notified support (at) wolfram (dot) com [email concealed] on 7 May 2010, was assigned [TS 16194]. Cheers, Paul Szabo psz (at) maths.usyd.edu (dot) au [email concealed] http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/ School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Sydney Australia

References:

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/archive/1/511298/100/0/threaded
http://secunia.com/advisories/39805
http://marc.info/?l=full-disclosure&m=127380255201760&w=2


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