Vulnerabilities > CVE-2021-32708 - Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition vulnerability in multiple products

047910
CVSS 8.1 - HIGH
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
HIGH
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
HIGH
Integrity impact
HIGH
Availability impact
HIGH
network
high complexity
thephpleague
fedoraproject
CWE-367
NVD
Published: 2021-06-24
Updated: 2023-11-07

Summary

Flysystem is an open source file storage library for PHP. The whitespace normalisation using in 1.x and 2.x removes any unicode whitespace. Under certain specific conditions this could potentially allow a malicious user to execute code remotely. The conditions are: A user is allowed to supply the path or filename of an uploaded file, the supplied path or filename is not checked against unicode chars, the supplied pathname checked against an extension deny-list, not an allow-list, the supplied path or filename contains a unicode whitespace char in the extension, the uploaded file is stored in a directory that allows PHP code to be executed. Given these conditions are met a user can upload and execute arbitrary code on the system under attack. The unicode whitespace removal has been replaced with a rejection (exception). For 1.x users, upgrade to 1.1.4. For 2.x users, upgrade to 2.1.1.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
Application
Thephpleague
94
OS
Fedoraproject
2

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Leveraging Race Conditions via Symbolic Links
    This attack leverages the use of symbolic links (Symlinks) in order to write to sensitive files. An attacker can create a Symlink link to a target file not otherwise accessible to her. When the privileged program tries to create a temporary file with the same name as the Symlink link, it will actually write to the target file pointed to by the attackers' Symlink link. If the attacker can insert malicious content in the temporary file she will be writing to the sensitive file by using the Symlink. The race occurs because the system checks if the temporary file exists, then creates the file. The attacker would typically create the Symlink during the interval between the check and the creation of the temporary file.
  • Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions
    This attack targets a race condition occurring between the time of check (state) for a resource and the time of use of a resource. The typical example is the file access. The attacker can leverage a file access race condition by "running the race", meaning that he would modify the resource between the first time the target program accesses the file and the time the target program uses the file. During that period of time, the attacker could do something such as replace the file and cause an escalation of privilege.

References