Scilab: Insecure temporary file usage — GLSA 200901-14

An insecure temporary file usage has been reported in Scilab, allowing for symlink attacks.

Affected packages

sci-mathematics/scilab on all architectures
Affected versions < 4.1.2-r1
Unaffected versions >= 4.1.2-r1

Background

Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations.

Description

Dmitry E. Oboukhov reported an insecure temporary file usage within the scilink, scidoc and scidem scripts.

Impact

A local attacker could perform symlink attacks to overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Scilab users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=sci-mathematics/scilab-4.1.2-r1"

References

Release date
January 21, 2009

Latest revision
January 21, 2009: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries