vulnerability note CVE-2012-4845

AIX: privileged read via ftp

Synthesis of the vulnerability

An authenticated attacker can use the ftp client, in order to read files which are read protected.
Impacted products: AIX.
Severity: 2/4.
Creation date: 19/10/2012.
Identifiers: BID-56134, CERTA-2012-AVI-597, CVE-2012-4845, IV23331, IV28715, IV28785, IV28787, VIGILANCE-VUL-12084.

Description of the vulnerability

The ftp client can be used to connect to a local or remote FTP server, in order to read or upload files.

The ftp service uses RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to process user's privileges. However, in order to provide a compatibility with older systems, it also changes the current user with setuid(). The ftp client can then read files as root, which are located in publicly readable directories. Full technical details are unknown.

An authenticated attacker can therefore use the ftp client, in order to read files which are read protected.
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