Bug 1802786 (CVE-2020-7221) - CVE-2020-7221 mariadb: mysql_install_db allows privilege escalation due to unsafe chown and chmod operations
Summary: CVE-2020-7221 mariadb: mysql_install_db allows privilege escalation due to un...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: CVE-2020-7221
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: 1802787 1802788
Blocks: 1802789
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2020-02-13 20:42 UTC by Guilherme de Almeida Suckevicz
Modified: 2021-02-16 20:34 UTC (History)
21 users (show)

Fixed In Version: mariadb 10.5.1, mariadb 10.4.12
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
A privilege escalation vulnerability was found in MariaDB, in the way it handled a `setuid` program during the installation process. A local MySQL user could abuse this flaw to escalate their privileges on the system, by gaining root privileges once the bash script `mysql_install_db.sh` is executed.
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-02-24 15:39:14 UTC
Embargoed:


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Description Guilherme de Almeida Suckevicz 2020-02-13 20:42:00 UTC
mysql_install_db in MariaDB 10.4.7 through 10.4.11 allows privilege escalation from the mysql user account to root because chown and chmod are performed unsafely, as demonstrated by a symlink attack on a chmod 04755 of auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool. NOTE: this does not affect the Oracle MySQL product, which implements mysql_install_db differently.

Reference:
https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2020/q1/55

Upstream commit:
https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commit/9d18b6246755472c8324bf3e20e234e08ac45618

Comment 1 Guilherme de Almeida Suckevicz 2020-02-13 20:43:20 UTC
Created mariadb tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1802787]
Affects: openstack-rdo [bug 1802788]

Comment 2 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-02-24 14:47:39 UTC
Plugin `auth_pam_tool` was introduced in MariaDB upstream version 10.4.0 with the following commits:
https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commit/efba0b1df5abe1ac972181a01bcbd208693639ae
https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commit/25410d448d5cd5796852da106324309d169981c9

The setuid permission was set in MariaDB upstream version 10.4.7 with commit:
https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commit/ec494cb1fadb40ae25b944bb1229fc2d6f88e8c6

Comment 3 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-02-24 15:26:47 UTC
Statement:

This flaw did not affect the versions of MariaDB as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and 8 as they did not include the vulnerable code, which was introduced in a newer version of the package. The same is true for the versions of MariaDB as shipped with Red Hat Software Collections 3.


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