USN-145-1: wget vulnerabilities

Releases

• Ubuntu 5.04
• Ubuntu 4.10

Details

Jan Minar discovered a path traversal vulnerability in wget. If the
name ".." was a valid host name (which can be achieved with a
malicious or poisoned domain name server), it was possible to trick
wget into creating downloaded files into arbitrary locations with
arbitrary names. For example, wget could silently overwrite the users
~/.bashrc and other configuration files which are executed
automatically. (CAN-2004-1487)

Jan Minar also discovered that wget printed HTTP response strings from
the server to the terminal without any filtering. Malicious HTTP
servers could exploit this to send arbitrary terminal sequences and
strings which would then be executed and printed to the console. This
could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges
of the user invoking wget. (CAN-2004-1488)

Hugo Vázquez Caramés discovered a race condition when writing output
files. After wget determined the output file name, but before the file
was actually opened (the time window is determined by the delay of the
first received data packet), a local attacker with with write
permission to the download directory could create a symbolic link with
the name of the output file. This could be exploited to overwrite
arbitrary files with the permissions of the user invoking wget.
(CAN-2004-2014)

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 5.04

• wget -

Ubuntu 4.10

• wget -

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

• CVE-2004-1487
• CVE-2004-1488
• CVE-2004-2014