It was reported [1] that the versions of the patch utility that support Git-style patches are vulnerable to a directory traversal flaw. This could allow an attacker to overwrite arbitrary files by applying a specially crafted patch, with the privileges of the user running patch. A reproducer for this issue is available in [1]. Upstream bugreport: http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?44059 [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=775873
Created patch tracking bugs for this issue: Affects: fedora-all [bug 1184491]
patch-2.7.3-1.fc21 has been pushed to the Fedora 21 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
patch-2.7.5-1.fc20 has been pushed to the Fedora 20 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
This is really only problematic if you're a) running patch on patch files you've not inspected first or b) are running patch as root. In either case, you shouldn't be patching things as root unless they're trusted and possibly it's worth inspecting patch files first. Statement: Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having Moderate security impact. This issue is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.