Bug 1429452 (CVE-2016-10243)

Summary:	CVE-2016-10243 texlive: mpost allows to run non-whitelisted external programs
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	Andrej Nemec <anemec>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	carnil, tcallawa, than
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2017-03-08 07:54:12 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	1429454
Bug Blocks:	1429453

Description Andrej Nemec 2017-03-06 12:14:23 UTC

The TeX system allows for calling external programs from within the TeX source code (called \write18). This has been restricted to a small set of programs since a long time ago.

Unfortunately it turned out that one program in the list, mpost (also shipped with TeX Live), allows in turn to specify other programs to be run, which allows arbitrary code execution when compiling a TeX document.

References:

http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2017/q1/555
https://scumjr.github.io/2016/11/28/pwning-coworkers-thanks-to-latex/

Upstream patch:

https://www.tug.org/svn/texlive?view=revision&revision=42605

Comment 1 Andrej Nemec 2017-03-06 12:16:38 UTC

Created texlive tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1429454]