Information disclosure in Vim

1) Information disclosure

EUVDB-ID: #VU31389

Risk: Low

CVSSv3.1: 4.8 [CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2017-17087

CWE-ID: CWE-200 - Information exposure

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a local authenticated user to gain access to sensitive information.

fileio.c in Vim prior to 8.0.1263 sets the group ownership of a .swp file to the editor's primary group (which may be different from the group ownership of the original file), which allows local users to obtain sensitive information by leveraging an applicable group membership, as demonstrated by /etc/shadow owned by root:shadow mode 0640, but /etc/.shadow.swp owned by root:users mode 0640, a different vulnerability than CVE-2017-1000382.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Vim: 8.0.0000 - 8.0.1262

External links

http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/11/27/2
http://security.cucumberlinux.com/security/details.php?id=166
http://github.com/vim/vim/commit/5a73e0ca54c77e067c3b12ea6f35e3e8681e8cf8
http://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/sRT9BtjLWMk/BRtSXNU4BwAJ
http://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/08/msg00003.html

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

How the attacker can exploit this vulnerability?

The attacker would have to trick the victim to visit a specially crafted website or open a file.

The attacker would have to login to the system and perform certain actions in order to exploit this vulnerability.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.