rubyzip gem rubyzip version 1.2.1 and earlier contains a Directory Traversal vulnerability in Zip::File component that can result in write arbitrary files to the filesystem. This attack appear to be exploitable via If a site allows uploading of .zip files , an attacker can upload a malicious file that contains symlinks or files with absolute pathnames "../" to write arbitrary files to the filesystem..

In the cron package through 3.0pl1-128 on Debian, and through 3.0pl1-128ubuntu2 on Ubuntu, the postinst maintainer script allows for group-crontab-to-root privilege escalation via symlink attacks against unsafe usage of the chown and chmod programs.

The daemonize.py module in Subversion 1.8.0 before 1.8.2 allows local users to gain privileges via a symlink attack on the pid file created for (1) svnwcsub.py or (2) irkerbridge.py when the --pidfile option is used. NOTE: this issue was SPLIT from CVE-2013-4262 based on different affected versions (ADT3).

MySQL before 5.0.67 allows local users to bypass certain privilege checks by calling CREATE TABLE on a MyISAM table with modified (1) DATA DIRECTORY or (2) INDEX DIRECTORY arguments that are originally associated with pathnames without symlinks, and that can point to tables created at a future time at which a pathname is modified to contain a symlink to a subdirectory of the MySQL home data directory. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2008-4097.

Puppet before 3.3.3 and 3.4 before 3.4.1 and Puppet Enterprise (PE) before 2.8.4 and 3.1 before 3.1.1 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on unspecified files.

Git is an open-source distributed revision control system. In affected versions of Git a specially crafted repository that contains symbolic links as well as files using a clean/smudge filter such as Git LFS, may cause just-checked out script to be executed while cloning onto a case-insensitive file system such as NTFS, HFS+ or APFS (i.e. the default file systems on Windows and macOS). Note that clean/smudge filters have to be configured for that. Git for Windows configures Git LFS by default, and is therefore vulnerable. The problem has been patched in the versions published on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. As a workaound, if symbolic link support is disabled in Git (e.g. via `git config --global core.symlinks false`), the described attack won't work. Likewise, if no clean/smudge filters such as Git LFS are configured globally (i.e. _before_ cloning), the attack is foiled. As always, it is best to avoid cloning repositories from untrusted sources. The earliest impacted version is 2.14.2. The fix versions are: 2.30.1, 2.29.3, 2.28.1, 2.27.1, 2.26.3, 2.25.5, 2.24.4, 2.23.4, 2.22.5, 2.21.4, 2.20.5, 2.19.6, 2.18.5, 2.17.62.17.6.

NLnet Labs Unbound, up to and including version 1.12.0, and NLnet Labs NSD, up to and including version 4.3.3, contain a local vulnerability that would allow for a local symlink attack. When writing the PID file, Unbound and NSD create the file if it is not there, or open an existing file for writing. In case the file was already present, they would follow symlinks if the file happened to be a symlink instead of a regular file. An additional chown of the file would then take place after it was written, making the user Unbound/NSD is supposed to run as the new owner of the file. If an attacker has local access to the user Unbound/NSD runs as, she could create a symlink in place of the PID file pointing to a file that she would like to erase. If then Unbound/NSD is killed and the PID file is not cleared, upon restarting with root privileges, Unbound/NSD will rewrite any file pointed at by the symlink. This is a local vulnerability that could create a Denial of Service of the system Unbound/NSD is running on. It requires an attacker having access to the limited permission user Unbound/NSD runs as and point through the symlink to a critical file on the system.

svnwcsub.py in Subversion 1.8.0 before 1.8.3, when using the --pidfile option and running in foreground mode, allows local users to gain privileges via a symlink attack on the pid file. NOTE: this issue was SPLIT due to different affected versions (ADT3). The irkerbridge.py issue is covered by CVE-2013-7393.

Perl module Data::UUID from CPAN version 1.219 vulnerable to symlink attacks

The Debian pg_ctlcluster, pg_createcluster, and pg_upgradecluster scripts, as distributed in the Debian postgresql-common package before 181+deb9u1 for PostgreSQL (and other packages related to Debian and Ubuntu), handled symbolic links insecurely, which could result in local denial of service by overwriting arbitrary files.

Gambas before 3.4.0 allows remote attackers to move or manipulate directory contents or perform symlink attacks due to the creation of insecure temporary directories.

Lintian before 2.5.12 allows remote attackers to gather information about the "host" system using crafted symlinks.

The save function in br/prefmanager.d in projectl 1.001 creates a projectL.prf file in the current working directory, which allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack.

Git is an open source, scalable, distributed revision control system. Versions prior to 2.30.6, 2.31.5, 2.32.4, 2.33.5, 2.34.5, 2.35.5, 2.36.3, and 2.37.4 are subject to exposure of sensitive information to a malicious actor. When performing a local clone (where the source and target of the clone are on the same volume), Git copies the contents of the source's `$GIT_DIR/objects` directory into the destination by either creating hardlinks to the source contents, or copying them (if hardlinks are disabled via `--no-hardlinks`). A malicious actor could convince a victim to clone a repository with a symbolic link pointing at sensitive information on the victim's machine. This can be done either by having the victim clone a malicious repository on the same machine, or having them clone a malicious repository embedded as a bare repository via a submodule from any source, provided they clone with the `--recurse-submodules` option. Git does not create symbolic links in the `$GIT_DIR/objects` directory. The problem has been patched in the versions published on 2022-10-18, and backported to v2.30.x. Potential workarounds: Avoid cloning untrusted repositories using the `--local` optimization when on a shared machine, either by passing the `--no-local` option to `git clone` or cloning from a URL that uses the `file://` scheme. Alternatively, avoid cloning repositories from untrusted sources with `--recurse-submodules` or run `git config --global protocol.file.allow user`.

aptlinex before 0.91 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on the gambas-apt.lock temporary file.

The YARN NodeManager daemon in Apache Hadoop 0.23.0 through 0.23.11 and 2.x before 2.5.2, when using Kerberos authentication, allows remote cluster users to change the permissions of certain files to world-readable via a symlink attack in a public tar archive, which is not properly handled during localization, related to distributed cache.

Hadoop 1.0.3 contains a symlink vulnerability.

The write_array_file function in utils/include.pl in GForge 4.5.14 updates configuration files by truncating them to zero length and then writing new data, which might allow attackers to bypass intended access restrictions or have unspecified other impact in opportunistic circumstances.

vobcopy 0.5.14 allows local users to append data to an arbitrary file, or create an arbitrary new file, via a symlink attack on the (1) /tmp/vobcopy.bla or (2) /tmp/vobcopy_0.5.14.log temporary file.

(1) xenbaked and (2) xenmon.py in Xen 3.1 and earlier allow local users to truncate arbitrary files via a symlink attack on /tmp/xenq-shm.

storeBackup.pl in storeBackup through 3.5 relies on the /tmp/storeBackup.lock pathname, which allows symlink attacks that possibly lead to privilege escalation. (Local users can also create a plain file named /tmp/storeBackup.lock to block use of storeBackup until an admin manually deletes that file.)

Inappropriate implementation in installer in Google Chrome prior to 84.0.4147.125 allowed a local attacker to potentially elevate privilege via a crafted filesystem.

The init script for Apache Geronimo on SUSE Linux follows symlinks when performing a chown operation, which might allow local users to obtain access to unspecified files or directories.

In Apache Hadoop, The unTar function uses unTarUsingJava function on Windows and the built-in tar utility on Unix and other OSes. As a result, a TAR entry may create a symlink under the expected extraction directory which points to an external directory. A subsequent TAR entry may extract an arbitrary file into the external directory using the symlink name. This however would be caught by the same targetDirPath check on Unix because of the getCanonicalPath call. However on Windows, getCanonicalPath doesn't resolve symbolic links, which bypasses the check. unpackEntries during TAR extraction follows symbolic links which allows writing outside expected base directory on Windows. This was addressed in Apache Hadoop 3.2.3

RARLAB UnRAR before 6.12 on Linux and UNIX allows directory traversal to write to files during an extract (aka unpack) operation, as demonstrated by creating a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. NOTE: WinRAR and Android RAR are unaffected.

w_editeur.c in XWine 1.0.1 for Debian GNU/Linux allows local users to overwrite or print arbitrary files via a symlink attack on the temporaire temporary file. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information.

Race condition in cpio 2.6 and earlier allows local users to modify permissions of arbitrary files via a hard link attack on a file while it is being decompressed, whose permissions are changed by cpio after the decompression is complete.

snapd 2.54.2 did not properly validate the location of the snap-confine binary. A local attacker who can hardlink this binary to another location to cause snap-confine to execute other arbitrary binaries and hence gain privilege escalation. Fixed in snapd versions 2.54.3+18.04, 2.54.3+20.04 and 2.54.3+21.10.1

The mysqlaccess script in MySQL 4.0.23 and earlier, 4.1.x before 4.1.10, 5.0.x before 5.0.3, and other versions including 3.x, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files or read temporary files via a symlink attack on temporary files.

KDE before 3.3.0 does not properly handle when certain symbolic links point to "stale" locations, which could allow local users to create or truncate arbitrary files.

squashfs_opendir in unsquash-2.c in Squashfs-Tools 4.5 allows Directory Traversal, a different vulnerability than CVE-2021-40153. A squashfs filesystem that has been crafted to include a symbolic link and then contents under the same filename in a filesystem can cause unsquashfs to first create the symbolic link pointing outside the expected directory, and then the subsequent write operation will cause the unsquashfs process to write through the symbolic link elsewhere in the filesystem.

Insufficient data validation in installer in Google Chrome prior to 86.0.4240.183 allowed a local attacker to potentially elevate privilege via a crafted filesystem.

The init script in the Debian x11-common package before 1:7.6+12 is vulnerable to a symlink attack that can lead to a privilege escalation during package installation.

In libXfont before 1.5.4 and libXfont2 before 2.0.3, a local attacker can open (but not read) files on the system as root, triggering tape rewinds, watchdogs, or similar mechanisms that can be triggered by opening files.

A flaw was found in Mercurial before 4.9. It was possible to use symlinks and subrepositories to defeat Mercurial's path-checking logic and write files outside a repository.

Hardlink before 0.1.2 operates on full file system objects path names which can allow a local attacker to use this flaw to conduct symlink attacks.

Samba before versions 4.6.1, 4.5.7 and 4.4.11 are vulnerable to a malicious client using a symlink race to allow access to areas of the server file system not exported under the share definition.

The npm package "tar" (aka node-tar) before versions 4.4.18, 5.0.10, and 6.1.9 has an arbitrary file creation/overwrite and arbitrary code execution vulnerability. node-tar aims to guarantee that any file whose location would be modified by a symbolic link is not extracted. This is, in part, achieved by ensuring that extracted directories are not symlinks. Additionally, in order to prevent unnecessary stat calls to determine whether a given path is a directory, paths are cached when directories are created. This logic was insufficient when extracting tar files that contained both a directory and a symlink with names containing unicode values that normalized to the same value. Additionally, on Windows systems, long path portions would resolve to the same file system entities as their 8.3 "short path" counterparts. A specially crafted tar archive could thus include a directory with one form of the path, followed by a symbolic link with a different string that resolves to the same file system entity, followed by a file using the first form. By first creating a directory, and then replacing that directory with a symlink that had a different apparent name that resolved to the same entry in the filesystem, it was thus possible to bypass node-tar symlink checks on directories, essentially allowing an untrusted tar file to symlink into an arbitrary location and subsequently extracting arbitrary files into that location, thus allowing arbitrary file creation and overwrite. These issues were addressed in releases 4.4.18, 5.0.10 and 6.1.9. The v3 branch of node-tar has been deprecated and did not receive patches for these issues. If you are still using a v3 release we recommend you update to a more recent version of node-tar. If this is not possible, a workaround is available in the referenced GHSA-qq89-hq3f-393p.

The npm package "tar" (aka node-tar) before versions 4.4.16, 5.0.8, and 6.1.7 has an arbitrary file creation/overwrite and arbitrary code execution vulnerability. node-tar aims to guarantee that any file whose location would be modified by a symbolic link is not extracted. This is, in part, achieved by ensuring that extracted directories are not symlinks. Additionally, in order to prevent unnecessary stat calls to determine whether a given path is a directory, paths are cached when directories are created. This logic was insufficient when extracting tar files that contained both a directory and a symlink with the same name as the directory, where the symlink and directory names in the archive entry used backslashes as a path separator on posix systems. The cache checking logic used both `\` and `/` characters as path separators, however `\` is a valid filename character on posix systems. By first creating a directory, and then replacing that directory with a symlink, it was thus possible to bypass node-tar symlink checks on directories, essentially allowing an untrusted tar file to symlink into an arbitrary location and subsequently extracting arbitrary files into that location, thus allowing arbitrary file creation and overwrite. Additionally, a similar confusion could arise on case-insensitive filesystems. If a tar archive contained a directory at `FOO`, followed by a symbolic link named `foo`, then on case-insensitive file systems, the creation of the symbolic link would remove the directory from the filesystem, but _not_ from the internal directory cache, as it would not be treated as a cache hit. A subsequent file entry within the `FOO` directory would then be placed in the target of the symbolic link, thinking that the directory had already been created. These issues were addressed in releases 4.4.16, 5.0.8 and 6.1.7. The v3 branch of node-tar has been deprecated and did not receive patches for these issues. If you are still using a v3 release we recommend you update to a more recent version of node-tar. If this is not possible, a workaround is available in the referenced GHSA-9r2w-394v-53qc.

ikiwiki before 3.20110608 allows remote attackers to hijack root's tty and run symlink attacks.

Mercurial prior to version 4.3 is vulnerable to a missing symlink check that can malicious repositories to modify files outside the repository

linki.py in ekg 2005-06-05 and earlier allows local users to overwrite or create arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary files.

The postinst script in the tomcat6 package before 6.0.45+dfsg-1~deb7u4 on Debian wheezy, before 6.0.35-1ubuntu3.9 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; the tomcat7 package before 7.0.28-4+deb7u8 on Debian wheezy, before 7.0.56-3+deb8u6 on Debian jessie, before 7.0.52-1ubuntu0.8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, and 16.10; and the tomcat8 package before 8.0.14-1+deb8u5 on Debian jessie, before 8.0.32-1ubuntu1.3 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, before 8.0.37-1ubuntu0.1 on Ubuntu 16.10, and before 8.0.38-2ubuntu1 on Ubuntu 17.04 might allow local users with access to the tomcat account to obtain sensitive information or gain root privileges via a symlink attack on the Catalina localhost directory.

Qemu before version 2.9 is vulnerable to an improper link following when built with the VirtFS. A privileged user inside guest could use this flaw to access host file system beyond the shared folder and potentially escalating their privileges on a host.

pithos before 0.3.5 allows overwrite of arbitrary files via symlinks.

An improper link resolution flaw can occur while extracting an archive leading to changing modes, times, access control lists, and flags of a file outside of the archive. An attacker may provide a malicious archive to a victim user, who would trigger this flaw when trying to extract the archive. A local attacker may use this flaw to gain more privileges in a system.

An issue was discovered in GNOME GLib before 2.66.8. When g_file_replace() is used with G_FILE_CREATE_REPLACE_DESTINATION to replace a path that is a dangling symlink, it incorrectly also creates the target of the symlink as an empty file, which could conceivably have security relevance if the symlink is attacker-controlled. (If the path is a symlink to a file that already exists, then the contents of that file correctly remain unchanged.)

The sudoedit personality of Sudo before 1.9.5 may allow a local unprivileged user to perform arbitrary directory-existence tests by winning a sudo_edit.c race condition in replacing a user-controlled directory by a symlink to an arbitrary path.

i2myspell in myspell 3.1 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on (1) /tmp/i2my#####.1 and (2) /tmp/i2my#####.2 temporary files.

mkmailpost in newsgate 1.6 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on a /tmp/mmp##### temporary file.