Bug 1292432 – CVE-2015-1336 man-db: TOCTOU bug when processing catman pages

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Bug 1292432 - (CVE-2015-1336) CVE-2015-1336 man-db: TOCTOU bug when processing catman pages

Summary:	CVE-2015-1336 man-db: TOCTOU bug when processing catman pages

Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG

Aliases:	CVE-2015-1336

Product:	Security Response
Classification:	Other
Component:	vulnerability (Show other bugs)
Sub Component:
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All Linux

Priority	medium Severity medium
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Assigned To:	Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
Docs Contact:

URL:
Whiteboard:	impact=moderate,public=20151213,repor...
Keywords:	Security

Depends On:	1292433
Blocks:	1292434
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Reported:	2015-12-17 07:49 EST by Martin Prpič
Modified:	2016-07-11 09:34 EDT (History)
CC List:	4 users (show)

See Also:
Fixed In Version:
Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points:	---
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:	2016-06-07 02:22:58 EDT
Type:	---
Regression:	---
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Documentation:	---
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oVirt Team:	---
RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Martin Prpič 2015-12-17 07:49:01 EST

The following flaw was found in man-db:

The daily mandb cleanup job for old catman pages changes the permissions of all non-man files to user man.

Originally filed against Ubuntu:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/man-db/+bug/1482786

External References:

http://www.halfdog.net/Security/2015/MandbSymlinkLocalRootPrivilegeEscalation/

Comment 1 Martin Prpič 2015-12-17 07:49:30 EST

Created man-db tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1292433]

Comment 2 Nikola Forró 2016-01-04 08:26:06 EST

Hello,

It appears to me that Fedora and RHEL7 man-db packages are not affected by this, since there is no cleanup job for old catman pages there:
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/man-db.git/tree/man-db.crondaily?h=f23

Comment 3 Doran Moppert 2016-06-07 02:15:54 EDT

Nikola's comment above is correct:  man-db in rhel and fedora are not
affected.  The man-db crontab in both doesn't chown thus lacks the
TOCTOU issue, plus (at least on rhel) /var/cache/man lacks the setgid
bit which makes the other part of this attack possible.

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