Symlink Attack Affecting binutils package, versions [,2.35.1)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team. Learn more

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.05% (18th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-UNMANAGED-BINUTILS-2368523
  • published26 Jan 2022
  • disclosed26 Mar 2021
  • creditUnknown

Introduced: 26 Mar 2021

CVE-2021-20197  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-59  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade binutils to version 2.35.1 or higher.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Symlink Attack. There is an open race window when writing output in the following utilities in GNU binutils version 2.35 and earlier:ar, objcopy, strip, ranlib. When these utilities are run as a privileged user (presumably as part of a script updating binaries across different users), an unprivileged user can trick these utilities into getting ownership of arbitrary files through a symlink.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1