GLSA 200502-13: Perl: Vulnerabilities in perl-suid wrapper

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	Perl: Vulnerabilities in perl-suid wrapper
Date:	02/11/2005
Bugs:	#80460
ID:	200502-13

Synopsis

Vulnerabilities leading to file overwriting and code execution with elevated privileges have been discovered in the perl-suid wrapper.

Background

Perl is a stable, cross-platform programming language created by Larry Wall. The perl-suid wrapper allows the use of setuid perl scripts, i.e. user-callable Perl scripts which have elevated privileges. This function is enabled only if you have the perlsuid USE flag set.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
dev-lang/perl	< 5.8.6-r3	>= 5.8.6-r3	All supported architectures

Description

perl-suid scripts honor the PERLIO_DEBUG environment variable and write to that file with elevated privileges (CAN-2005-0155). Furthermore, calling a perl-suid script with a very long path while PERLIO_DEBUG is set could trigger a buffer overflow (CAN-2005-0156).

Impact

A local attacker could set the PERLIO_DEBUG environment variable and call existing perl-suid scripts, resulting in file overwriting and potentially the execution of arbitrary code with root privileges.

Workaround

You are not vulnerable if you do not have the perlsuid USE flag set or do not use perl-suid scripts.

Resolution

All Perl users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose dev-lang/perl

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200502-13.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.