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[ For Public Release ]
__________________________________________________________
The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Capability
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__________________________________________________________
INFORMATION BULLETIN
Lynx Temporary Files & LYDownload.c Vulnerabilities
July 16, 1997 16:00 GMT Number H-82
______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM: Two vulnerabilities exist for Lynx: 1) temporary files, and
2) LYDownload.c.
PLATFORM: All Unix or Unix-like systems running Lynx up to and including
version 2.7.1
DAMAGE: 1) May allow local users to gain root privileges.
2) This vulnerability may be exploited by anyone who can provide
Lynx a carefully crafted URL.
SOLUTION: Apply patches or workarounds listed below.
______________________________________________________________________________
VULNERABILITY Exploit details involving these vulnerabilities have been made
ASSESSMENT: publicly available.
______________________________________________________________________________
[ Start CERT Advisories ]
1) Temporary Files
=============================================================================
CERT* Vendor-Initiated Bulletin VB-97.05
July 15, 1997
Topic: Vulnerability in Lynx Temporary Files
Source: Jim Spath
To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, the CERT
Coordination Center is forwarding the following information from Jim Spath,
who coordinated this bulletin with several members of the lynx-dev mailing
list. They urge you to act on this information as soon as possible.
information is included in the forwarded text below; please contact them if
you have any questions or need further information.
Questions about the bulletin only can be sent to Jim Spath
<jspath@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us>; questions about Lynx can be sent to
<lynx-dev@sig.net>.
=======================FORWARDED TEXT STARTS HERE============================
I. Description
Lynx typically stores persistent temporary files in /tmp on Un*x
systems. The filenames Lynx chooses can be predicted, and another
user on the system may be able to exploit a race condition to replace
the temporary file with a symbolic link or with another file.
Installed versions of Lynx where a directory writeable by other users
(such as /tmp on a machine to which multiple users have access) is used
to store files during download are vulnerable. This vulnerability can
only be exploited by a user with access to an account on the machine
running Lynx.
II. Impact
A malicious user with access to the same machine as other Lynx users
may be able to cause another user's Lynx process to overwrite another
file. It may also be possible to replace the contents of a downloaded
file with a file other than the one the user downloaded, or to cause
the user to print a file other than the one selected for printing.
III. Workarounds
A workaround for Lynx 2.7.1 is described in the "solutions" section
below.
IV. Solutions
There are several ways to solve this problem.
A. The best solution to the problem is to apply the FOTEMODS patch
set and to ensure that /tmp/ on your system is a "sticky directory."
If you cannot apply this patch set, if your system does not support
sticky directories, or if you cannot make /tmp/ a sticky directory,
you must use one of the other solutions below.
B. The other solution to this problem is to change the setting
of TEMP_SPACE from the default ("/tmp/") to non-world-writeable
directories.
To do this with unpatched Lynx version 2.7.1:
1. Lynx can be rebuilt with the "#define TEMP_SPACE" in
lynx2-7-1/userdefs.h changed from "/tmp" to point to a
directory only writeable by the user executing Lynx.
2. The LYNX_TEMP_SPACE environment variable may be set before
shell startup files (.profile, .cshrc, or equivalent) or into
the system profile (/etc/profile or equivalent).
As an aid to allowing Lynx to find user-specific temp. directories,
Lynx 2.7.1 will replace "~" in the temp. space allocation with the
path to the user's home directory.
Individual users may also set the LYNX_TEMP_SPACE environment
variable to point to another place known to be unwriteable by other
users (for instance a subdirectory of the users' home directory, or a
mode 0700 directory of a "sticky" /tmp).
To do this with Lynx 2.7.1 with the FOTEMODS patch set applied:
You may use any of the methods listed for "vanilla" Lynx 2.7.1.
You may also use "$USER" in TEMP_SPACE (or $LYNX_TEMP_SPACE) to
specify user-specific temp. directories such as /tmp/$USER/.
The FOTEMODS patch set includes the changes described above as well
as other fixes and feature enhancements. It can be found at:
http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/fote/patches/
The FOTEMODS patches avoid any pre-existing filenames for new temporary
files, thus skipping any symbolic link which may have been created with
an upcoming temporary filename. These patches also allow the administrator
or user to define TEMP_SPACE (or the LYNX_TEMP_SPACE environment variable)
as "/tmp/$USER" (for example) for pre-existing directories that correspond
to accounts' usernames and have protections/ACLs set for access only by
the appropriate users.
This patch set also does chmod(600) for temporary files which Lynx
creates, but the account should be set up with an equivalent umask
before invoking Lynx.
C. One other solution (a source code patch) for this problem, by Klaus
Weide, can be found at:
http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/klaus/temp/
However, this patch should be considered "alpha" quality code, and
its author is not supporting it at this time.
The next release of Lynx will eliminate this vulnerability. Interested
parties should subscribe to and read the LYNX-DEV mailing list
(send mail to majordomo@sig.net with "subscribe lynx-dev" as the
body) for information about this release.
V. Contact information
If you believe you have found a security problem with the current
version of Lynx, we urge you to forward it to the LYNX-DEV
mailing list at <lynx-dev@sig.net>.
The LYNX-DEV mailing list (with further information about this
vulnerability) is archived at:
http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/
Lynx security information is available at:
http://www.crl.com/~subir/lynx/security.html
General information about Lynx is available at:
http://lynx.browser.org/
On-line help and documentation about Lynx is available using the
(h)elp command. More help is available in the source distribution.
Should your questions not be answered by these means, further
questions may be directed to <help@lynx.browser.org>.
Please don't contact Lynx developers personally about Lynx-related
issues; please use either the mailing list or the "help" addresses
given above.
========================FORWARDED TEXT ENDS HERE=============================
2) LYDownload.c
=============================================================================
CERT* Vendor-Initiated Bulletin VB-97.06
July 15, 1997
Topic: Vulnerability in Lynx Downloading
Source: Jim Spath
To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, the CERT
Coordination Center is forwarding the following information from Jim Spath,
who coordinated this bulletin with several members of the lynx-dev mailing
list. They urge you to act on this information as soon as possible. Contact
information is included in the forwarded text below; please contact them if
you have any questions or need further information.
Questions about the bulletin only can be sent to Jim Spath
<jspath@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us>; questions about Lynx can be sent to
<lynx-dev@sig.net>.
=======================FORWARDED TEXT STARTS HERE============================
I. Description
Lynx, on Un*x systems, may be coerced to read or execute arbitrary
files on the local system regardless of restrictions set by the
system administrator.
Installed versions of Lynx up to and including version 2.7.1 on Unix
or Unix-like operating systems are vulnerable.
II. Impact
A. Captive Lynx installations
Users of Lynx in a captive situation (where the Lynx user does not
normally have access to a shell prompt, or to a menu system that allows
the user to run arbitrary commands) can get access to a shell prompt.
This includes public Lynxes as well as any setup where the user
is restricted as to which programs can be run.
B. All Lynx installations
This vulnerability could also conceivably allow malicious webmasters to
add these carefully crafted URLs to their pages to cause unsuspecting
Lynx users (in captive accounts or otherwise) to execute arbitrary
commands.
This vulnerability can be exploited by anyone who can provide Lynx a
carefully crafted URL.
III. Workaround
If administrators of captive Lynxes cannot apply the code patches or
obtain updated binaries as described below, they are advised to disable
(g)oto on Lynx.
There is currently no workaround for impact "B" above. The code patches
below must be applied (or updated binaries obtained) to eliminate
this impact.
IV. Solution
Current developmental releases of Lynx have fixed this problem since
1997-06-26. Patches you may find from before that date may not
entirely eliminate the vulnerability.
The most recent stable version of Lynx (version 2.7.1) can be
patched to fix this problem by replacing the file "lynx2-7-1/src/LYDownload.c"
with a replacement file.
The replacement file to eliminate this vulnerability in version
2.7.1 is available (courtesy of Foteos Macrides) at:
http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/fote/patches/lynx2-7-1/src/LYDownload.c
All systems running Lynx versions 2.7.1 or earlier should be
updated to fix this problem.
Two development branches of the Lynx source code are available at:
http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/fote/patches/
http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/current/
Binary distributions of Lynx may be found at:
http://www.crl.com/~subir/lynx/binaries.html
Note that producing binaries is a volunteer job and the latest (or any)
version may not be available for a specific platform.
V. Contact information
If you believe you have found a security problem with the current
version of Lynx, we urge you to forward it to the LYNX-DEV
mailing list at <lynx-dev@sig.net>.
The LYNX-DEV mailing list (with further information about this
vulnerability) is archived at:
http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/
Lynx security information is available at:
http://www.crl.com/~subir/lynx/security.html
General information about Lynx is available at:
http://lynx.browser.org/
On-line help and documentation about Lynx is available using the
(h)elp command. More help is available in the source distribution.
Should your questions not be answered by these means, further
questions may be directed to <help@lynx.browser.org>.
Please don't contact Lynx developers personally about Lynx-related
issues; please use either the mailing list or the "help" addresses
given above.
========================FORWARDED TEXT ENDS HERE=============================
[ End CERT Advisories ]
______________________________________________________________________________
CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of CERT and Jim Spath for the
information contained in this bulletin.
______________________________________________________________________________
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