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Gentoo Linux Security Advisory GLSA 201709-11
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https://security.gentoo.org/
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Severity: High
Title: GIMPS: Root privilege escalation
Date: September 17, 2017
Bugs: #603408
ID: 201709-11

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Synopsis
========

Gentoo’s GIMPS ebuilds are vulnerable to privilege escalation due to
improper permissions. A local attacker could use it to gain root
privileges.

Background
==========

GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, is a software capable
of find Mersenne Primes, which are used in cryptography. GIMPS is also
used for hardware testing.

Affected packages
=================

——————————————————————-
Package / Vulnerable / Unaffected
——————————————————————-
1 sci-mathematics/gimps < 28.10-r1 >= 28.10-r1

Description
===========

It was discovered that Gentoo’s default GIMPS installation suffered
from a privilege escalation vulnerability in the init script. This
script calls an unsafe “chown -R” command in checkconfig() function.

Impact
======

A local attacker who does not belong to the root group, but has the
ability to modify the /var/lib/gimps directory can escalate privileges
to the root group.

Workaround
==========

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution
==========

All GIMPS users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge –sync
# emerge –ask –oneshot –verbose “>=sci-mathematics/gimps-28.10-r1”

References
==========

[ 1 ] CVE-2017-14484
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-14484

Availability
============

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at
the Gentoo Security Website:

https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201709-11

Concerns?
=========

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the
confidentiality and security of our users’ machines is of utmost
importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to
security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at
https://bugs.gentoo.org.

License
=======

Copyright 2017 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text
belongs to its owner(s).

The contents of this document are licensed under the
Creative Commons – Attribution / Share Alike license.

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