Cargo incorrectly handled symlinks inside of crate tarballs downloaded from third-party registries, allowing a malicious crate to override the source code of another crate from the same registry. The severity of the vulnerability is medium for users of third-party registries. Users of crates.io are not affected, as crates.io forbids uploading crates containing any symlink.
Weakness
The product, when opening a file or directory, does not sufficiently account for when the file is a symbolic link that resolves to a target outside of the intended control sphere. This could allow an attacker to cause the product to operate on unauthorized files.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cargo | Rust-lang | * | 1.96.0 (excluding) |
| Rustc-1.85 | Ubuntu | questing | * |
| Rustc-1.88 | Ubuntu | questing | * |
| Rustc-1.91 | Ubuntu | questing | * |
Potential Mitigations
- Follow the principle of least privilege when assigning access rights to entities in a software system.
- Denying access to a file can prevent an attacker from replacing that file with a link to a sensitive file. Ensure good compartmentalization in the system to provide protected areas that can be trusted.