Title: Apple MacOS X Insecure Default Permissions Vulnerability
Severity: MODERATE
Description:
A vulnerability exists in versions of Apple MacOS X.
Due to a misconfiguration of file permissions, the destop folder belonging to a given user ( /Users/username/Desktop) is by default world-readable/writable. If the folder's permissions are not manually reset, arbitrary users can read from and write to any files in this location. In addition to the potential loss of confidentiality and integrity of this data, if this folder contains security-related information such as usernames, passwords or configuration data, a hostile user may be able to exploit it and further undermine the security of the host.
This problem is likely due to improper UMASK settings, although this has not been confirmed. Note that some users have reported MacOS X 10.0.4 systems which do not exhibit this vulnerability.
Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu@deaddrop.org> notes that this issue may be applicable to accounts created during the Mac OS X beta test period: "Sounds like the problem accounts were upgrades from beta versions. If you are running an upgrade from a beta, then you might want to take a second look. Fresh installs seem to be just fine."
An attempt has been made to fix this issue in MacOS X 10.1.
However, installing the MacOS X 10.1 upgrade will still leave users created before the upgrade with the insecure default permissions. This includes the admin account if permissions are not changed manually before the upgrade.
Affected Products:
- Apple Mac OS X 10.0.0
- Apple Mac OS X 10.0.1
- Apple Mac OS X 10.0.2
- Apple Mac OS X 10.0.3
- Apple Mac OS X 10.0.4
- Apple Mac OS X 10.1.0
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