Privilege escalation in Podman

1) UNIX symbolic link following

EUVDB-ID: #VU26515

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 4.6 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2019-18466

CWE-ID: CWE-61 - UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.

The vulnerability exists due to a symlink following issue in libpod (podman) in the host context during a copy operation from the container to the host, because an undesired glob operation occurs. An attacker could create a container image containing particular symlinks that, when copied by a victim user to the host filesystem, may overwrite existing files with others from the host.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may result in privilege escalation on the host operating system.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Podman: 0.2 - 1.5.1

External links

http://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:4269
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1744588
http://github.com/containers/libpod/commit/5c09c4d2947a759724f9d5aef6bac04317e03f7e
http://github.com/containers/libpod/compare/v1.5.1...v1.6.0
http://github.com/containers/libpod/issues/3829

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

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