Local root exploit in SuSE Linux 8.2Pro

[Stefan Nordhausen <deletethis.nordhaus@informatik.hu-berlin.de>]

Affected:               SuSE Linux 8.2Pro
Not affected:           SuSE Linux 7.3Pro, non-SuSE distributions
Possibly affected:      other SuSE distributions
Vulnerable package:     susewm

Impact:                 Local user can gain root privileges
Exploit type:           Symlink attack
Release date:           October 6th 2003
Vendor status:          SuSE was contacted on September 4th (> 1 month ago).
                        No SuSE-patch yet.


A symlink vulnerability exists in the shell script 
/sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.susewm, line 86. This shell script is part of the 
"susewm" package. This package is required by the package "kdebase3", so if 
KDE3 is installed on your system(s), you should be vulnerable.

This vulnerability can be used by a local attacker to gain root privileges. An 
exploit has already been written by me, but I will not release it before 
October 20th.


Workaround:
As there is no SuSE patch available yet, you will have to fix this yourself. 
You can use the following quick'n'dirty patch to fix the issue. Note however 
that I am NOT responsible if you mess up your system! You should know what 
you're doing!

In the mentioned script you should replace _every_ occurrence of

$r/tmp/susewm.$$

with the following:

$r/root/susewm.$$

It's not pretty, but it should work.

This advisory, contact information and the exploit can be found at 
http://www.hu-berlin.de/~nordhaus/sec/vul/index.html

--
You cannot spell "believe" without "lie".