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Phusion Passenger Race Condition Allows Privilege Escalation

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 14, 2022 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Jul 3, 2023

Package

bundler passenger (RubyGems)

Affected versions

>= 3.0.0, < 5.3.2

Patched versions

5.3.2

Description

A race condition in the nginx module in Phusion Passenger 3.x through 5.x before 5.3.2 allows local escalation of privileges when a non-standard passenger_instance_registry_dir with insufficiently strict permissions is configured. Replacing a file with a symlink after the file was created, but before it was chowned, leads to the target of the link being chowned via the path. Targeting sensitive files such as root's crontab file allows privilege escalation.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jun 17, 2018
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 14, 2022
Reviewed Jun 9, 2023
Last updated Jul 3, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.042%
(5th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2018-12029

GHSA ID

GHSA-jjcj-fgfm-9g9r

Source code

No known source code
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