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GHSA-9w2p-rh8c-v9g5

HighCVSS 8.8 / 10
Published Dec 9, 2023·Last modified Nov 22, 2024
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

A PyInstaller built application, elevated as a privileged process, may be tricked by an unprivileged attacker into deleting files the unprivileged user does not otherwise have access to.

A user is affected if all the following are satisfied:

  • The user runs an application containing either matplotlib or win32com.
  • The application is ran as administrator (or at least a user with higher privileges than the attacker).
  • The user's temporary directory is not locked to that specific user (most likely due to TMP/TEMP environment variables pointing to an unprotected, arbitrary, non default location).
  • Either:
    • The attacker is able to very carefully time the replacement of a temporary file with a symlink. This switch must occur exactly between shutil.rmtree()'s builtin symlink check and the deletion itself
    • The application was built with Python 3.7.x or earlier which has no protection against Directory Junctions links

Patches

The vulnerability has been addressed in https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/pull/7827 which corresponds to pyinstaller >= 5.13.1

Workarounds

Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?

No workaround, although the attack complexity becomes much higher if the application is built with Python >= 3.8.0.

Risk Scores
Base Score
8.8

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability can affect other systems as well, not just the initial system. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
8.1

Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.

EPSS
0.32%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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High severity
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