CVE-2014-1420

On desktop, Ubuntu UI Toolkits StateSaver would serialise data on tmp/ files which an attacker could use to expose potentially sensitive data. StateSaver would also open files without the O_EXCL flag. An attacker could exploit this to launch a symlink attack, though this is partially mitigated by symlink and hardlink restrictions in Ubuntu. Fixed in 1.1.1188+14.10.20140813.4-0ubuntu1.

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

Extended Description

It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.

Potential Mitigations

• Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
• An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/586.html

References

• http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-sdk-team/ubuntu-ui-toolkit/staging/revision/1182
• https://launchpad.net/bugs/1348241