GLSA 200907-13: PulseAudio: Local privilege escalation

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	PulseAudio: Local privilege escalation
Date:	07/16/2009
Bugs:	#276986
ID:	200907-13

Synopsis

A vulnerability in PulseAudio may allow a local user to execute code with escalated privileges.

Background

PulseAudio is a network-enabled sound server with an advanced plug-in system.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
media-sound/pulseaudio	< 0.9.9-r54	>= 0.9.9-r54	All supported architectures

Description

Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes of the Google Security Team discovered that the pulseaudio binary is installed setuid root, and does not drop privileges before re-executing itself. The vulnerability has independently been reported to oCERT by Yorick Koster.

Impact

A local user who has write access to any directory on the file system containing /usr/bin can exploit this vulnerability using a race condition to execute arbitrary code with root privileges.

Workaround

Ensure that the file system holding /usr/bin does not contain directories that are writable for unprivileged users.

Resolution

All PulseAudio users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.9-r54"

References

CVE-2009-1894

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200907-13.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.