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authorCarlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>2013-07-19 02:42:03 -0400
committerCarlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>2013-07-21 15:39:55 -0400
commite4608715e6e1dd2adc91982fd151d5ba4f761d69 (patch)
tree04bc13d3736e14045f0f9fc37e0303a067f943cf /INSTALL
parentda2d62df77de66e5de5755228759f8bc18481871 (diff)
downloadglibc-e4608715e6e1dd2adc91982fd151d5ba4f761d69.tar.gz
CVE-2013-2207, BZ #15755: Disable pt_chown.
The helper binary pt_chown tricked into granting access to another user's pseudo-terminal. Pre-conditions for the attack: * Attacker with local user account * Kernel with FUSE support * "user_allow_other" in /etc/fuse.conf * Victim with allocated slave in /dev/pts Using the setuid installed pt_chown and a weak check on whether a file descriptor is a tty, an attacker could fake a pty check using FUSE and trick pt_chown to grant ownership of a pty descriptor that the current user does not own. It cannot access /dev/pts/ptmx however. In most modern distributions pt_chown is not needed because devpts is enabled by default. The fix for this CVE is to disable building and using pt_chown by default. We still provide a configure option to enable hte use of pt_chown but distributions do so at their own risk.
Diffstat (limited to 'INSTALL')
-rw-r--r--INSTALL12
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index 721a7fc10c..2c61704b8f 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -136,6 +136,18 @@ will be used, and CFLAGS sets optimization options for the compiler.
`--enable-lock-elision=yes'
Enable lock elision for pthread mutexes by default.
+`--enable-pt_chown'
+ The file `pt_chown' is a helper binary for `grantpt' (*note
+ Pseudo-Terminals: Allocation.) that is installed setuid root to
+ fix up pseudo-terminal ownership. It is not built by default
+ because systems using the Linux kernel are commonly built with the
+ `devpts' filesystem enabled and mounted at `/dev/pts', which
+ manages pseudo-terminal ownership automatically. By using
+ `--enable-pt_chown', you may build `pt_chown' and install it
+ setuid and owned by `root'. The use of `pt_chown' introduces
+ additional security risks to the system and you should enable it
+ only if you understand and accept those risks.
+
`--build=BUILD-SYSTEM'
`--host=HOST-SYSTEM'
These options are for cross-compiling. If you specify both