Link following in groff - CVE-2009-5080

 

Link following in groff - CVE-2009-5080

Published: June 30, 2011 / Updated: August 11, 2020


Vulnerability identifier: #VU44903
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Green
CVE-ID: CVE-2009-5080
CWE-ID: CWE-59
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability: No public exploit available
Vendor: GNU
Affected software:
groff

Detailed vulnerability description

The vulnerability allows a remote non-authenticated attacker to manipulate or delete data.

The (1) contrib/eqn2graph/eqn2graph.sh, (2) contrib/grap2graph/grap2graph.sh, and (3) contrib/pic2graph/pic2graph.sh scripts in GNU troff (aka groff) 1.21 and earlier do not properly handle certain failed attempts to create temporary directories, which might allow local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on a file in a temporary directory, a different vulnerability than CVE-2004-1296.


How to mitigate CVE-2009-5080

Install update from vendor's website.

Sources