Title: Vipw Insecure File Permissions Vulnerability
Severity: MODERATE
Description:
Vipw is an editing application used for system password and group files.
Some versions of the 'vipw' program fail to correctly set the permissions of the '/etc/shadow' file after editing it. The 'shadow' file contains the encrypted password information for the user accounts on a system; it's contents are therefore sensitive and should only be readable by privileged processes.
Once edited with vipw, the permissions of the file are changed to world-readable, thus allowing any local user to read its contents. This may lead to a system compromise.
Affected Products:
- Andries Brouwer util-linux 2.10.0s
- Andries Brouwer util-linux 2.11.0d
- MandrakeSoft Linux Mandrake 8.0.0
- RedHat Linux 7.1.0
- RedHat util-linux-2.10s-12.i386.rpm 0.0.0
References:
- RedHat: Bugzilla bug 48786
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