[Full-disclosure] Mathematica on Linux /tmp/MathLink vulnerability

[Henri Salo]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 11:56:10 +1000
paul.szabo at sydney.edu.au wrote:

> "If you're doing anything technical, think Mathematica --..."
>   http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
> 
> Mathematica7 on Linux uses the /tmp/MathLink directory in insecure
> ways. Mathematica creates or re-uses an existing /tmp/MathLink
> directory, and overwrites files within and follows symlinks. This
> type of behaviour is "known unsafe" on multi-user machines e.g.
> University login servers. As a classic example of a symlink attack,
> if an "attacker" uses:
> 
>   mkdir /tmp/MathLink; ln -s /home/victim/.bashrc /tmp/MathLink/.gshmm
> 
> then when the victim runs Mathematica his ~/.bashrc will be clobbered.
> New files are created world-writable, allowing a complete compromise
> of the user account by linking to ~/.bash_logout . (If root ever uses
> Mathematica then the damage is greater.)
> 
> Mathematica uses also /tmp/fonts$$.conf in insecure ways.
> 
> Workaround: use command-line math instead of pretty interface.
> 
> Notified support at wolfram.com on 7 May 2010, was assigned [TS 16194].
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Paul Szabo   psz at maths.usyd.edu.au
> http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/ School of Mathematics and
> Statistics   University of Sydney    Australia

Have you requested CVE-identifier for this?

---
Henri Salo