GLSA 201710-07: OCaml: Privilege escalation

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	OCaml: Privilege escalation
Date:	10/08/2017
Bugs:	#622544
ID:	201710-07

Synopsis

A vulnerability in OCaml may allow local users to gain root privileges.

Background

OCaml is a high-level, strongly-typed, functional, and object-oriented programming language from the ML family of languages.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
dev-lang/ocaml	< 4.04.2	>= 4.04.2	All supported architectures

Description

A bad sanitization of environment variables: CAML_CPLUGINS, CAML_NATIVE_CPLUGINS and CAML_BYTE_CPLUGINS in the OCaml compiler allows the execution of raised privileges via external code.

Impact

A local attacker, by using specially crafted environment variables, could possibly escalate privileges to the root group.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All OCaml users should upgrade to the latest version:

      # emerge --sync
      # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/ocaml-4.04.2"

References

CVE-2017-9772

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201710-07.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.