Vulnerabilities > CVE-2017-14484 - Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in Gentoo Sci-Mathematics-Gimps 28.10

047910
CVSS 7.3 - HIGH
Attack vector
LOCAL
Attack complexity
LOW
Privileges required
LOW
Confidentiality impact
HIGH
Integrity impact
HIGH
Availability impact
HIGH
local
low complexity
gentoo
CWE-269
nessus

Summary

The Gentoo sci-mathematics/gimps package before 28.10-r1 for Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) allows local users to gain privileges by creating a hard link under /var/lib/gimps, because an unsafe "chown -R" command is executed.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
Application
Gentoo
1

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Restful Privilege Elevation
    Rest uses standard HTTP (Get, Put, Delete) style permissions methods, but these are not necessarily correlated generally with back end programs. Strict interpretation of HTTP get methods means that these HTTP Get services should not be used to delete information on the server, but there is no access control mechanism to back up this logic. This means that unless the services are properly ACL'd and the application's service implementation are following these guidelines then an HTTP request can easily execute a delete or update on the server side. The attacker identifies a HTTP Get URL such as http://victimsite/updateOrder, which calls out to a program to update orders on a database or other resource. The URL is not idempotent so the request can be submitted multiple times by the attacker, additionally, the attacker may be able to exploit the URL published as a Get method that actually performs updates (instead of merely retrieving data). This may result in malicious or inadvertent altering of data on the server.

Nessus

NASL familyGentoo Local Security Checks
NASL idGENTOO_GLSA-201709-11.NASL
descriptionThe remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-201709-11 (GIMPS: Root privilege escalation) It was discovered that Gentoo’s default GIMPS installation suffered from a privilege escalation vulnerability in the init script. This script calls an unsafe “chown -R” command in checkconfig() function. Impact : A local attacker who does not belong to the root group, but has the ability to modify the /var/lib/gimps directory can escalate privileges to the root group. Workaround : There is no known workaround at this time.
last seen2020-06-01
modified2020-06-02
plugin id103279
published2017-09-18
reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2017-2018 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/103279
titleGLSA-201709-11 : GIMPS: Root privilege escalation