po4a: Insecure temporary file creation — GLSA 200709-04

A vulnerability has been discovered in po4a, allowing for a symlink attack.

Affected packages

app-text/po4a on all architectures
Affected versions < 0.32-r1
Unaffected versions >= 0.32-r1

Background

po4a is a set of tools for helping with the translation of documentation.

Description

The po4a development team reported a race condition in the gettextize() function when creating the file "/tmp/gettextization.failed.po".

Impact

A local attacker could perform a symlink attack, possibly overwriting files with the permissions of the user running po4a.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All po4a users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-text/po4a-0.32-r1"

References

Release date
September 13, 2007

Latest revision
September 13, 2007: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries