update: glibc #1198
Description
Name: glibc
CVEs: CVE-2023-4911
CVSSs: 7.8
Action Needed: update to >= 2.37-r7
Summary: The GNU C Library's dynamic loader "find[s] and load[s] the shared objects (shared libraries) needed by a program, prepare[s] the program to run, and then run[s] it" (man ld.so). The dynamic loader is extremely security sensitive, because its code runs with elevated privileges when a local user executes a set-user-ID program, a set-group-ID program, or a program with capabilities. Historically, the processing of environment variables such as LD_PRELOAD, LD_AUDIT, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH has been a fertile source of vulnerabilities in the dynamic loader.
Recently, we discovered a vulnerability (a buffer overflow) in the dynamic loader's processing of the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable (https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Tunables.html). This vulnerability was introduced in April 2021 (glibc 2.34) by commit 2ed18c ("Fix SXID_ERASE behavior in setuid programs (BZ #27471)").
We successfully exploited this vulnerability and obtained full root privileges on the default installations of Fedora 37 and 38, Ubuntu 22.04 and 23.04, Debian 12 and 13; other distributions are probably also vulnerable and exploitable (one notable exception is Alpine Linux, which uses musl libc, not the glibc). We will not publish our exploit for now; however, this buffer overflow is easily exploitable (by transforming it into a data-only attack), and other researchers might publish working exploits shortly after this coordinated disclosure.
See also https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/10/03/2.
refmap.gentoo: https://bugs.gentoo.org/915127