Title: AIX 'lsfs' Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
Severity: MODERATE
Description:
The IBM AIX lsfs utility displays filesystem information such as mount points, permissions and volume sizes. To display the information lsfs calls the grep and lslv utilities. The lsfs utility is typically installed with setuid 'root' privileges.
A vulnerability has been discovered in lsfs which may allow an attacker to carry out actions with elevated privileges. The problem lies in the implicitly defined location of the grep and lslv utilities. When the specified utilities are invoked the absolute path is not defined. This issue allows for trojaned binaries to be invoked their place.
A malicious local user could exploit this vulnerability by supplying a malicious binary named grep or lslv. By modifying the PATH environment variable it may be possible for the attacker to trick lsfs into running the attacker-supplied binary. As lsfs is installed setuid 'root', all commands executed using the described method would be done so with superuser privileges.
Affected Products:
- IBM AIX 4.3.0
- IBM AIX 4.3.1
- IBM AIX 4.3.2
- IBM AIX 4.3.3
References:
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