Skip to main content

Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')

CVE-2016-8641

High
7.8/10

Summary

A privilege escalation vulnerability was found in nagios 4.2.x that occurs in daemon-init.in when creating necessary files and insecurely changing the ownership afterwards. It's possible for the local attacker to create symbolic links before the files are to be created and possibly escalating the privileges with the ownership change.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-59 - Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

'Improper link resolution before file access' occurs when software accesses a file resource but fails to verify that the file isn't a link or shortcut to another file. An attacker can potentially gain access to arbitrary files and from there the impact can vary, depending on the application, from sensitive data exposure to remote code execution.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published