GLSA 201709-11: GIMPS: Root privilege escalation

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	GIMPS: Root privilege escalation
Date:	09/17/2017
Bugs:	#603408
ID:	201709-11

Synopsis

Gentoo's GIMPS ebuilds are vulnerable to privilege escalation due to improper permissions. A local attacker could use it to gain root privileges.

Background

GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, is a software capable of find Mersenne Primes, which are used in cryptography. GIMPS is also used for hardware testing.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
sci-mathematics/gimps	< 28.10-r1	>= 28.10-r1	All supported architectures

Description

It was discovered that Gentoo’s default GIMPS installation suffered from a privilege escalation vulnerability in the init script. This script calls an unsafe “chown -R” command in checkconfig() function.

Impact

A local attacker who does not belong to the root group, but has the ability to modify the /var/lib/gimps directory can escalate privileges to the root group.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All GIMPS users should upgrade to the latest version:

      # emerge --sync
      # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=sci-mathematics/gimps-28.10-r1"

References

CVE-2017-14484

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201709-11.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.