Syntastic (aka vim-syntastic) through 3.9.0 does not properly handle searches for configuration files (it searches the current directory up to potentially the root). This improper handling might be exploited for arbitrary code execution via a malicious gcc plugin, if an attacker has write access to a directory that is a parent of the base directory of the project being checked. NOTE: exploitation is more difficult after 3.8.0 because filename prediction may be needed.

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

  - Syntastic (aka vim-syntastic) through 3.9.0 does not properly handle searches for configuration files (it     searches the current directory up to potentially the root). This improper handling might be exploited for     arbitrary code execution via a malicious gcc plugin, if an attacker has write access to a directory that     is a parent of the base directory of the project being checked. NOTE: exploitation is more difficult after     3.8.0 because filename prediction may be needed. (CVE-2018-11319)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Enrico Zini discovered a vulnerability in Syntastic, an addon module for the Vim editor that runs a file through external checkers and displays any resulting errors. Config files were looked up in the current working directory which could result in arbitrary shell code execution if a malformed source code file is opened.

CVE-2018-11319 The improper handling of search for configuration files might be exploited for arbitrary code execution via a malicious gcc plugin.

For Debian 8 'Jessie', this problem has been fixed in version 3.5.0-1+deb8u1.

We recommend that you upgrade your vim-syntastic packages.

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

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
254099	Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2018-11319	Nessus	Misc.	high
111534	Debian DSA-4261-1 : vim-syntastic - security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
111357	Debian DLA-1444-1 : vim-syntastic security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2018-11319

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high