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securityvulnsSecurityvulnsSECURITYVULNS:DOC:25462
HistoryJan 07, 2011 - 12:00 a.m.

Mathematica8 on Linux /tmp/MathLink vulnerability

2011-01-0700:00:00
vulners.com
13

The problem that was reported as below for Mathematica7, is present
also/still in (the "free trial" version of) Mathematica8.

Cheers,

Paul Szabo [email protected] http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/
School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Sydney Australia


I wrote on 14 May 2010:

> "If you're doing anything technical, think Mathematica --…"
> http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
>
> Mathematica7 on Linux uses the /tmp/MathLink directory in insecure ways.
> Mathematica creates or re-uses an existing /tmp/MathLink directory, and
> overwrites files within and follows symlinks. This type of behaviour is
> "known unsafe" on multi-user machines e.g. University login servers.
> As a classic example of a symlink attack, if an "attacker" uses:
>
> mkdir /tmp/MathLink; ln -s /home/victim/.bashrc /tmp/MathLink/.gshmm
>
> then when the victim runs Mathematica his ~/.bashrc will be clobbered.
> New files are created world-writable, allowing a complete compromise of
> the user account by linking to ~/.bash_logout . (If root ever uses
> Mathematica then the damage is greater.)
>
> Mathematica uses also /tmp/fonts$$.conf in insecure ways.
>
> Workaround: use command-line math instead of pretty interface.
>
> Notified [email protected] on 7 May 2010, was assigned [TS 16194].