rsync: Directory traversal in rsync daemon — GLSA 200407-10

Under specific conditions, the rsync daemon is vulnerable to a directory traversal allowing to write files outside a sync module.

Affected packages

Background

rsync is a utility that provides fast incremental file transfers. It is used to efficiently synchronize files between hosts and is used by emerge to fetch Gentoo's Portage tree. rsyncd is the rsync daemon, which listens to connections from rsync clients.

Description

When rsyncd is used without chroot ("use chroot = false" in the rsyncd.conf file), the paths sent by the client are not checked thoroughly enough. If rsyncd is used with read-write permissions ("read only = false"), this vulnerability can be used to write files anywhere with the rights of the rsyncd daemon. With default Gentoo installations, rsyncd runs in a chroot, without write permissions and with the rights of the "nobody" user.

Impact

On affected configurations and if the rsync daemon runs under a privileged user, a remote client can exploit this vulnerability to completely compromise the host.

Workaround

You should never set the rsync daemon to run with "use chroot = false". If for some reason you have to run rsyncd without a chroot, then you should not set "read only = false".

Resolution

 # emerge sync

 # emerge -pv ">=net-misc/rsync-2.6.0-r2"
 # emerge ">=net-misc/rsync-2.6.0-r2"

References

• CAN-2004-0426

Release date
July 12, 2004

Latest revision
July 12, 2004: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries

• 49534