Bug 1429452 (CVE-2016-10243) - CVE-2016-10243 texlive: mpost allows to run non-whitelisted external programs
Summary: CVE-2016-10243 texlive: mpost allows to run non-whitelisted external programs
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: CVE-2016-10243
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1429454
Blocks: 1429453
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2017-03-06 12:14 UTC by Andrej Nemec
Modified: 2019-09-29 14:08 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-03-08 07:54:12 UTC
Embargoed:

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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]
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