CVE-2017-18018 is a vulnerability in GNU Coreutils
Published on January 4, 2018
In GNU Coreutils through 8.29, chown-core.c in chown and chgrp does not prevent replacement of a plain file with a symlink during use of the POSIX "-R -L" options, which allows local users to modify the ownership of arbitrary files by leveraging a race condition.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2017-18018 is exploitable with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. Public availability of a proof of concept (POC) exploit exists for CVE-2017-18018. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a high impact on confidentiality and integrity, and no impact on availability.
Weakness Type
What is a Race Condition Vulnerability?
The program contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently.
CVE-2017-18018 has been classified to as a Race Condition vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2017-18018
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Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.