#VU24452 Race condition in Portage - CVE-2019-20384

Vulnerability identifier: #VU24452

Vulnerability risk: Low

CVSSv4.0: 4.4 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Clear]

CVE-ID: CVE-2019-20384

CWE-ID: CWE-362

Exploitation vector: Local

Exploit availability: No

Vulnerable software:
Portage
Other software / Other software solutions

Vendor: Gentoo

Description

The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.

The vulnerability exists due to a race condition. A local user can place a Trojan horse plugin in the "/usr/lib64/nagios/plugins" directory by leveraging access to the nagios user account, because this directory is writable in between a call to emake and a call to fowners.

Mitigation
Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Portage: 2.3.0 - 2.3.99

---

External links
https://bugs.gentoo.org/692492
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=7f03ec4a46055a75eb13bf5fad85cf451822f589

---

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.