Vulnerabilities > CVE-2016-10243 - Improper Input Validation vulnerability in multiple products
Attack vector
NETWORK Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
NONE Confidentiality impact
HIGH Integrity impact
HIGH Availability impact
HIGH Summary
TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file.
Vulnerable Configurations
Part | Description | Count |
---|---|---|
OS | 2 | |
OS | 2 | |
Application | 1 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables This attack pattern involves causing a buffer overflow through manipulation of environment variables. Once the attacker finds that they can modify an environment variable, they may try to overflow associated buffers. This attack leverages implicit trust often placed in environment variables.
- Server Side Include (SSI) Injection An attacker can use Server Side Include (SSI) Injection to send code to a web application that then gets executed by the web server. Doing so enables the attacker to achieve similar results to Cross Site Scripting, viz., arbitrary code execution and information disclosure, albeit on a more limited scale, since the SSI directives are nowhere near as powerful as a full-fledged scripting language. Nonetheless, the attacker can conveniently gain access to sensitive files, such as password files, and execute shell commands.
- Cross Zone Scripting An attacker is able to cause a victim to load content into their web-browser that bypasses security zone controls and gain access to increased privileges to execute scripting code or other web objects such as unsigned ActiveX controls or applets. This is a privilege elevation attack targeted at zone-based web-browser security. In a zone-based model, pages belong to one of a set of zones corresponding to the level of privilege assigned to that page. Pages in an untrusted zone would have a lesser level of access to the system and/or be restricted in the types of executable content it was allowed to invoke. In a cross-zone scripting attack, a page that should be assigned to a less privileged zone is granted the privileges of a more trusted zone. This can be accomplished by exploiting bugs in the browser, exploiting incorrect configuration in the zone controls, through a cross-site scripting attack that causes the attackers' content to be treated as coming from a more trusted page, or by leveraging some piece of system functionality that is accessible from both the trusted and less trusted zone. This attack differs from "Restful Privilege Escalation" in that the latter correlates to the inadequate securing of RESTful access methods (such as HTTP DELETE) on the server, while cross-zone scripting attacks the concept of security zones as implemented by a browser.
- Cross Site Scripting through Log Files An attacker may leverage a system weakness where logs are susceptible to log injection to insert scripts into the system's logs. If these logs are later viewed by an administrator through a thin administrative interface and the log data is not properly HTML encoded before being written to the page, the attackers' scripts stored in the log will be executed in the administrative interface with potentially serious consequences. This attack pattern is really a combination of two other attack patterns: log injection and stored cross site scripting.
- Command Line Execution through SQL Injection An attacker uses standard SQL injection methods to inject data into the command line for execution. This could be done directly through misuse of directives such as MSSQL_xp_cmdshell or indirectly through injection of data into the database that would be interpreted as shell commands. Sometime later, an unscrupulous backend application (or could be part of the functionality of the same application) fetches the injected data stored in the database and uses this data as command line arguments without performing proper validation. The malicious data escapes that data plane by spawning new commands to be executed on the host.
Nessus
NASL family Fedora Local Security Checks NASL id FEDORA_2017-B72CAFA5B4.NASL description Security fix for CVE-2016-10243 Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues. last seen 2020-06-05 modified 2017-03-30 plugin id 99057 published 2017-03-30 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2017-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/99057 title Fedora 25 : 6:texlive (2017-b72cafa5b4) NASL family Gentoo Local Security Checks NASL id GENTOO_GLSA-201709-07.NASL description The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-201709-07 (Kpathsea: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code) It was discovered that the mpost program from the shell_escape_commands list is capable of executing arbitrary external programs during the conversion of .tex files. The responsible function is runpopen() (texmfmp.c). Impact : A remote attacker, by enticing a user to open a specially crafted .tex file, could possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the process. Workaround : There is no known workaround at this time. last seen 2020-06-01 modified 2020-06-02 plugin id 103275 published 2017-09-18 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2017-2018 Tenable Network Security, Inc. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/103275 title GLSA-201709-07 : Kpathsea: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code NASL family Debian Local Security Checks NASL id DEBIAN_DSA-3803.NASL description It was discovered that texlive-base, the TeX Live package which provides the essential TeX programs and files, whitelists mpost as an external program to be run from within the TeX source code (called \write18). Since mpost allows to specify other programs to be run, an attacker can take advantage of this flaw for arbitrary code execution when compiling a TeX document. last seen 2020-06-01 modified 2020-06-02 plugin id 97589 published 2017-03-08 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2017-2018 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/97589 title Debian DSA-3803-1 : texlive-base - security update NASL family Huawei Local Security Checks NASL id EULEROS_SA-2019-1873.NASL description According to the version of the texlive packages installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file.(CVE-2016-10243) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues. last seen 2020-05-08 modified 2019-09-16 plugin id 128796 published 2019-09-16 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2019-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/128796 title EulerOS 2.0 SP2 : texlive (EulerOS-SA-2019-1873) NASL family Debian Local Security Checks NASL id DEBIAN_DLA-847.NASL description The TeX system allows for calling external programs from within the TeX source code. This has been restricted to a small set of programs since a long time ago. Unfortunately it turned out that one program in the list, mpost, allows in turn to specify other programs to be run, which allows arbitrary code execution when compiling a TeX document. For Debian 7 last seen 2020-03-17 modified 2017-03-09 plugin id 97614 published 2017-03-09 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2017-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/97614 title Debian DLA-847-1 : texlive-base security update NASL family Ubuntu Local Security Checks NASL id UBUNTU_USN-3401-1.NASL description It was discovered that TeX Live incorrectly handled certain system commands. If a user were tricked into processing a specially crafted TeX file, a remote attacker could execute arbitrary code. Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues. last seen 2020-06-01 modified 2020-06-02 plugin id 102697 published 2017-08-23 reporter Ubuntu Security Notice (C) 2017-2019 Canonical, Inc. / NASL script (C) 2017-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/102697 title Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS : texlive-base vulnerability (USN-3401-1) NASL family Huawei Local Security Checks NASL id EULEROS_SA-2019-2062.NASL description According to the version of the texlive packages installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file.(CVE-2016-10243) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues. last seen 2020-05-08 modified 2019-09-24 plugin id 129255 published 2019-09-24 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2019-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/129255 title EulerOS 2.0 SP3 : texlive (EulerOS-SA-2019-2062) NASL family Fedora Local Security Checks NASL id FEDORA_2017-A8ADD6C46C.NASL description Security fix for CVE-2016-10243 Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues. last seen 2020-06-05 modified 2017-07-17 plugin id 101700 published 2017-07-17 reporter This script is Copyright (C) 2017-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. source https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/101700 title Fedora 26 : 6:texlive (2017-a8add6c46c)
References
- https://www.tug.org/svn/texlive?view=revision&revision=42605
- https://scumjr.github.io/2016/11/28/pwning-coworkers-thanks-to-latex/
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/96593
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/03/05/1
- http://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3803
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201709-07
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VL6PUKPWEXYIPIAZRIX5ZLQWCSALVLFP/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/B7CNJ4HKX7X6V7VMN3UCU7KPY6IX4XRB/