CVE-2024-43882 — exec: Fix ToCToU between perm check and set-uid/gid usage

Affected: Linux, Siemens RUGGEDCOM RST2428P, Siemens SCALANCE XC-300/XR-300/XC-400/XR-500WG/XR-500 family, Siemens SCALANCE XCM-/XRM-/XCH-/XRH-300 family, Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 TM MFP - GNU/Linux subsystem

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

exec: Fix ToCToU between perm check and set-uid/gid usage

When opening a file for exec via do_filp_open(), permission checking is done against the file's metadata at that moment, and on success, a file pointer is passed back. Much later in the execve() code path, the file metadata (specifically mode, uid, and gid) is used to determine if/how to set the uid and gid. However, those values may have changed since the permissions check, meaning the execution may gain unintended privileges.

For example, if a file could change permissions from executable and not set-id:

---------x 1 root root 16048 Aug 7 13:16 target

to set-id and non-executable:

---S------ 1 root root 16048 Aug 7 13:16 target

it is possible to gain root privileges when execution should have been disallowed.

While this race condition is rare in real-world scenarios, it has been observed (and proven exploitable) when package managers are updating the setuid bits of installed programs. Such files start with being world-executable but then are adjusted to be group-exec with a set-uid bit. For example, "chmod o-x,u+s target" makes "target" executable only by uid "root" and gid "cdrom", while also becoming setuid-root:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root cdrom 16048 Aug 7 13:16 target

becomes:

-rwsr-xr-- 1 root cdrom 16048 Aug 7 13:16 target

But racing the chmod means users without group "cdrom" membership can get the permission to execute "target" just b…

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CVE-2024-43882 — exec: Fix ToCToU between perm check and set-uid/gid usage