Title: NEdit Incremental Backup File Symbolic Link Vulnerability
Severity: LOW
Description:
NEdit is the Nirvana editor, a freely availabe text editor included with various implementations of the UNIX Operating system. It provides a graphic front end, and features designed to emulate the functions of text editors for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh Operating Systems.
A problem with NEdit could make it possible for local users to launch symbolic link attacks against users of the editor. This problem is due to insufficient checking of the incremental backup file prior to attempting to write to it.
When a file is being edited by a user of NEdit, the file is periodically backed up to a file with bearing the name of the original file edited, and prefixed with a tilde. Prior to performing this function, the existance of the file with a tilde prefix is not checked for. If a user of the NEdit editor were to use the program in a world-writable directory such as /tmp, a local user that observed the user of the editor and created a symbolic link prior to the first incremental backup by the editor could overwrite any file owned by the user of NEdit with the contents of the incremental backup.
This problem also affects files created by the editor using the .bck file name, which is also used for file backups.
Affected Products:
- Debian Linux 2.2.0
- Debian Linux 2.2.0 68k
- Debian Linux 2.2.0 alpha
- Debian Linux 2.2.0 arm
- Debian Linux 2.2.0 powerpc
- Debian Linux 2.2.0 sparc
- MandrakeSoft Corporate Server 1.0.1
- MandrakeSoft Linux Mandrake 7.1.0
- MandrakeSoft Linux Mandrake 7.2.0
- MandrakeSoft Linux Mandrake 8.0.0
- NEdit NEdit 5.1.1
- Progeny Debian 1.0.0
- S.u.S.E. Linux 6.3.0
- S.u.S.E. Linux 6.3.0 alpha
- S.u.S.E. Linux 6.4.0
- S.u.S.E. Linux 6.4.0 alpha
- S.u.S.E. Linux 6.4.0 ppc
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.0.0
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.0.0 ppc
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.0.0 sparc
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0 ppc
- S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0 sparc
- SGI IRIX 6.5.0
- SGI IRIX 6.5.1
- SGI IRIX 6.5.10
- SGI IRIX 6.5.11
- SGI IRIX 6.5.12
- SGI IRIX 6.5.13
- SGI IRIX 6.5.2
- SGI IRIX 6.5.3
- SGI IRIX 6.5.4
- SGI IRIX 6.5.5
- SGI IRIX 6.5.6
- SGI IRIX 6.5.7
- SGI IRIX 6.5.8
- SGI IRIX 6.5.9
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