Medium

glibc $ORIGIN RPATH/RUNPATH Privilege Escalation

IdentifiersCVE-2011-0536CWE-426

CVE-2011-0536 is a local privilege-escalation vulnerability in certain modified versions of the GNU C Library dynamic loader, specifically in elf/dl-object.c. The flaw affects builds such as glibc-2.5-49.el5_5.6 and glibc-2.12-1.7.el6_0.3 shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Due to incorrect handling of untrusted search paths involving the $ORIGIN token in DT_RPATH or DT_RUNPATH, the dynamic loader can resolve and load a crafted dynamic shared object from a subdirectory of the current working directory while executing a setuid or setgid program. The vulnerable condition can arise when $ORIGIN appears in the executable itself or in a referenced library. The issue is explicitly noted as an incomplete or incorrect fix for CVE-2010-3847.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows a local attacker to elevate privileges by causing a privileged setuid or setgid program to load attacker-controlled code from an untrusted location. Impact is therefore execution of arbitrary code with the effective privileges of the target program, typically root for setuid-root binaries, or the target group context for setgid binaries.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

As a temporary mitigation, avoid or remove use of $ORIGIN in DT_RPATH or DT_RUNPATH for any setuid or setgid executable and for libraries loaded by such binaries. Audit privileged binaries and their dependent libraries for unsafe runtime search paths. Restrict execution from attacker-controlled working directories and minimize the presence of setuid/setgid programs where possible. Monitoring for unexpected shared-object loads from relative or user-writable paths may help detect exploitation attempts.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade to a glibc build that correctly rejects unsafe $ORIGIN-based library resolution for privileged execution contexts. Apply the vendor-provided security update for the affected distribution or product. Because the issue stems from an incorrect prior fix, remediation requires replacing the vulnerable glibc package rather than application-level changes alone.

PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 1 candidate as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.

VALID 0 / 1 TOTALView more in app

All candidate exploits were filtered out by Mallory's validation.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType

GNU ProjectGlibcapplication

Red HatEnterprise Linuxoperating_system

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

ACTIVITY FEED

Recent activity

1 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.

1 SOURCESView more in app

sourcewareNews

Jan 21, 2019

19728 - (CVE-2016-6261) out of bounds stack read in libidn function idna_to_ascii_4i (CVE-2016-6261)

A dynamic linker $ORIGIN handling vulnerability referenced as being addressed through additional fixes in this release.

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity