Wget 1.9 and 1.9.1 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on the name of the file being downloaded.

Updated wget package that fixes several security issues is now available.

This update has been rated as having low security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

GNU Wget is a file retrieval utility that can use either the HTTP or FTP protocols.

A bug was found in the way wget writes files to the local disk. If a malicious local user has write access to the directory wget is saving a file into, it is possible to overwrite files that the user running wget has write access to. (CVE-2004-2014)

A bug was found in the way wget filters redirection URLs. It is possible for a malicious Web server to overwrite files the user running wget has write access to. Note: in order for this attack to succeed the local DNS would need to resolve '..' to an IP address, which is an unlikely situation. (CVE-2004-1487)

A bug was found in the way wget displays HTTP response codes. It is possible that a malicious web server could inject a specially crafted terminal escape sequence capable of misleading the user running wget.
(CVE-2004-1488)

Users should upgrade to this updated package, which contains a version of wget that is not vulnerable to these issues.

Jan Minar discovered a path traversal vulnerability in wget. If the name '..' was a valid host name (which can be achieved with a malicious or poisoned domain name server), it was possible to trick wget into creating downloaded files into arbitrary locations with arbitrary names. For example, wget could silently overwrite the users ~/.bashrc and other configuration files which are executed automatically. (CAN-2004-1487)

Jan Minar also discovered that wget printed HTTP response strings from the server to the terminal without any filtering. Malicious HTTP servers could exploit this to send arbitrary terminal sequences and strings which would then be executed and printed to the console. This could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the user invoking wget. (CAN-2004-1488)

Hugo Vazquez Carames discovered a race condition when writing output files. After wget determined the output file name, but before the file was actually opened (the time window is determined by the delay of the first received data packet), a local attacker with with write permission to the download directory could create a symbolic link with the name of the output file. This could be exploited to overwrite arbitrary files with the permissions of the user invoking wget.
(CAN-2004-2014).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Hugo Vazquez Carames discovered a race condition when writing output files in wget. After wget determined the output file name, but before the file was actually opened, a local attacker with write permissions to the download directory could create a symbolic link with the name of the output file. This could be exploited to overwrite arbitrary files with the permissions of the user invoking wget. The time window of opportunity for the attacker is determined solely by the delay of the first received data packet.

The updated packages have been patched to correct this issue.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2005:771 advisory.

    GNU Wget is a file retrieval utility that can use either the HTTP or     FTP protocols.

    A bug was found in the way wget writes files to the local disk. If a     malicious local user has write access to the directory wget is saving a     file into, it is possible to overwrite files that the user running wget     has write access to. (CAN-2004-2014)

    A bug was found in the way wget filters redirection URLs. It is possible     for a malicious Web server to overwrite files the user running wget has     write access to. Note: in order for this attack to succeed the local     DNS would need to resolve .. to an IP address, which is an unlikely     situation.  (CAN-2004-1487)

    A bug was found in the way wget displays HTTP response codes. It is     possible that a malicious web server could inject a specially crafted     terminal escape sequence capable of misleading the user running wget.
    (CAN-2004-1488)

    Users should upgrade to this updated package, which contains a version of     wget that is not vulnerable to these issues.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
21857	CentOS 3 / 4 : wget (CESA-2005:771)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	medium
20538	Ubuntu 4.10 / 5.04 : wget vulnerabilities (USN-145-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	medium
20128	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : wget (MDKSA-2005:204)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	low
19833	RHEL 4 : wget (RHSA-2005:771)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2004-2014

critical

Tenable Plugins

medium

medium

low

critical