Race condition in coreutils - CVE-2017-18018
Published: January 4, 2018 / Updated: August 3, 2020
Vulnerability identifier: #VU33153
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 5.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2017-18018
CWE-ID: CWE-362
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local authenticated user to manipulate data.
In GNU Coreutils through 8.29, chown-core.c in chown and chgrp does not prevent replacement of a plain file with a symlink during use of the POSIX "-R -L" options, which allows local users to modify the ownership of arbitrary files by leveraging a race condition.
Affected software
coreutils
coreutils (Alpine package)
coreutils
Fedora
Brocade Fabric OS
Juniper Cloud Native Router
Junos cRPD
coreutils (Alpine package)
coreutils
Fedora
Brocade Fabric OS
Juniper Cloud Native Router
Junos cRPD
How to mitigate CVE-2017-18018
Install update from vendor's website.
coreutils (Alpine package) - update to 8.32-r0
coreutils - update to 8.27-19.fc27
Brocade Fabric OS - update to 9.1.0
Juniper Cloud Native Router - update to 23.4R1
Junos cRPD - update to 23.4R1
coreutils - update to 8.27-19.fc27
Brocade Fabric OS - update to 9.1.0
Juniper Cloud Native Router - update to 23.4R1
Junos cRPD - update to 23.4R1