J-Security Center

Title: Berkeley Parallel Make Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Severity: HIGH

Description:

Parallel Make (pmake) is a freely available version of the make program, originally distributed with Berkeley Unix. It is designed to execute Makefiles and build programs.

A problem with pmake could make it possible for a local user to gain elevated privileges. The problem is due to a buffer overflow vulnerability in the program.

pmake is not typically setuid root, although some Linux distributions default to installing it this way. When a Makefile is executed by pmake, certain user-defined variables can be set in the Makefile by the user. One such variable is the shell definition variable, or .SHELL. By supplying a string of greater than 512 characters in the check= field of the .SHELL variable, it is possible to overwrite the return address, and execute of arbitrary code with root privileges.

This vulnerability could lead to a local user gaining elevated privileges, including administrative access, and could result in further compromise of an affected system.

Affected Products:

  • 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 alpha
  • S.u.S.E. Linux 7.0.0 ppc
  • S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0 alpha
  • S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0 ppc
  • S.u.S.E. Linux 7.1.0 x86
  • S.u.S.E. Linux 7.2.0

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