dbus before 1.10.28, 1.12.x before 1.12.16, and 1.13.x before 1.13.12, as used in DBusServer in Canonical Upstart in Ubuntu 14.04 (and in some, less common, uses of dbus-daemon), allows cookie spoofing because of symlink mishandling in the reference implementation of DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1 in the libdbus library. (This only affects the DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1 authentication mechanism.) A malicious client with write access to its own home directory could manipulate a ~/.dbus-keyrings symlink to cause a DBusServer with a different uid to read and write in unintended locations. In the worst case, this could result in the DBusServer reusing a cookie that is known to the malicious client, and treating that cookie as evidence that a subsequent client connection came from an attacker-chosen uid, allowing authentication bypass.

Affected: Ubuntu:16.04:LTS: dbus, Ubuntu:18.04:LTS: dbus

Joe Vennix discovered that DBus incorrectly handled DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1 authentication. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to bypass authentication and connect to DBus servers with elevated privileges.