linki.py in ekg 2005-06-05 and earlier allows local users to overwrite or create arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary files.

This advisory adds security support for the stable amd64 distribution.
It covers all security updates since the release of sarge, which were missing updated packages for the not yet official amd64 port. Future security advisories will include updates for this port as well.

Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered that some contributed scripts (contrib/ekgh, contrib/ekgnv.sh, and contrib/getekg.sh) in the ekg package created temporary files in an insecure way, which allowed exploitation of a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the script. (CAN-2005-1850)

Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered a shell command injection vulnerability in a contributed utility (contrib/scripts/ekgbot-pre1.py). By sending specially crafted content to the bot, an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running ekgbot. (CAN-2005-1851)

Marcin Slusarz discovered an integer overflow in the Gadu library. By sending a specially crafted incoming message, a remote attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the application using libgadu. (CAN-2005-1852)

Eric Romang discovered that another contributed script (contrib/scripts/linki.py) created temporary files in an insecure way, which allowed exploitation of a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the script.
(CAN-2005-1916)

Grzegorz Jaskiewicz discovered several integer overflows in the Gadu library. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the Gadu client application or even execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user by sending specially crafted messages. (CAN-2005-2369)

Szymon Zygmunt and Michal Bartoszkiewicz discovered a memory alignment error in the Gadu library. By sending specially crafted messages, a remote attacker could crash the application using the library. (CAN-2005-2370)

Marcin Slusarz discovered that the Gadu library did not properly handle endianess conversion in some cases. This caused invalid behavior on big endian architectures. The only affected supported architecture is powerpc. (CAN-2005-2448).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Eric Romang reports that ekg creates temporary files in an insecure manner. This can be exploited by an attacker using a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files and possibly execute arbitrary commands with the permissions of the user running ekg.

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in ekg, a console Gadu Gadu client, an instant messaging program. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following vulnerabilities :

  - CAN-2005-1850     Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered insecure     temporary file creation in contributed scripts.

  - CAN-2005-1851

    Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered potential     shell command injection in a contributed script.

  - CAN-2005-1916

    Eric Romang discovered insecure temporary file creation     and arbitrary command execution in a contributed script     that can be exploited by a local attacker.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
57528	Debian DSA-773-1 : amd64 - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
20568	Ubuntu 5.04 : ekg vulnerabilities (USN-162-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
19352	FreeBSD : ekg -- insecure temporary file creation (9a035a56-eff0-11d9-8310-0001020eed82)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	low
19223	Debian DSA-760-1 : ekg - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2005-1916

medium

Tenable Plugins

critical

critical

low

critical