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Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')

CVE-2011-1075

Low
3.7/10

Summary

FreeBSD's crontab calculates the MD5 sum of the previous and new cronjob to determine if any changes have been made before copying the new version in. In particular, it uses the MD5File() function, which takes a pathname as an argument, and is called with euid 0. A race condition in this process may lead to an arbitrary MD5 comparison regardless of the read permissions.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE

CWE-362 - Race Condition

A race condition occurs in a shared memory program when two threads/processes access the same shared memory data, and at least one thread executes a write operation. This vulnerability manipulates the time to check vs. time to use (TOC/TOU) gap between the threads in the critical section to cause disorientation in the shared data. The impact can vary from compromising the confidentiality of the system to causing the system to crash or to execute arbitrary code.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published