Bug 6749 - restoring a symlink changes owner/group of the target file
Summary: restoring a symlink changes owner/group of the target file
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: dump
Version: 6.1
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Nalin Dahyabhai
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 1999-11-05 10:33 UTC by Chris Siebenmann
Modified: 2008-05-01 15:37 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-02-03 18:44:09 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Chris Siebenmann 1999-11-05 10:33:06 UTC
When restore is restoring symlinks, it winds up changing
the ownership and the group of the file the symlink points
at, instead of the owner/group of the symlink itself.

 Reproduction: reproduction may be somewhat difficult,
because you need to arrange that the symlink will be
later in the dump than the file it points at. On many
systems, doing (as a normal user) something like:
	cd /tmp; ln -s / foobar
[root runs dump & restores somewhere]
is likely to work -- but if you do this to test, remember
to fix the ownership of / afterwards!

 I consider this a security issue because in multi-user
environments where the operators or system administrators
will restore deleted/lost files for people, a nasty user
can exploit this to change the ownership of important
system files such as /etc/passwd to themselves, eg:
	evil$ ln -s /etc/passwd src/important/test-3
[wait for a backup to run]
	evil$ rm -rf src/important
	evil$ mail -s 'restore request' root
	I've lost my $HOME/src/important source tree;
	can you restore it from backups?
	^D
[wait for restore...]
	evil$ vi /etc/passwd # time for root2 to appear

Fix: use lchown() instead of chown() when restoring the
ownership/group of symlinks.

Comment 1 bjn 2000-01-19 14:35:59 UTC
Apparently the author has seen this also; he says in the attached that all
versions (including 0.3, used in RedHat 5.2) are vulnerable, and that 0.4b9
fixes it to use lchown():

http://lwn.net/1999/1111/a/dump.html

Is a new RPM in the works?

Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 2000-01-19 14:50:59 UTC
lchown does not work on stock Red Hat 5.2 systems, so the "fix" is
upgrading to Red Hat 6.0 (or upgrading glibc kernel and a bunch more).

Comment 3 Elliot Lee 2000-02-03 18:44:59 UTC
jbj indicates that this problem is solved in the current release.


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