vcdiff in Emacs 20.7 to 22.1.50, when used with SCCS, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary files.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has one or more packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities that have been acknowledged by the vendor but will not be patched.

  - emacs: command injection flaw within enriched mode handling (CVE-2017-14482)

  - vcdiff in Emacs 20.7 to 22.1.50, when used with SCCS, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via     a symlink attack on temporary files. (CVE-2008-1694)

  - Emacs 21 and XEmacs automatically load and execute .flc (fast lock) files that are associated with other     files that are edited within Emacs, which allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary code.
    (CVE-2008-2142)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied on the package manager's report that the package is installed.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 host has one or more packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities that have been acknowledged by the vendor but will not be patched.

  - emacs: fast-lock-mode arbitrary lisp code execution (CVE-2008-2142)

  - vcdiff in Emacs 20.7 to 22.1.50, when used with SCCS, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via     a symlink attack on temporary files. (CVE-2008-1694)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied on the package manager's report that the package is installed.

Steve Grubb found that the vcdiff script in Emacs create temporary files insecurely when used with SCCS. A local user could exploit a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the program (CVE-2008-1694).

The updated packages have been patched to correct this issue.

It was discovered that Emacs did not account for precision when formatting integers. If a user were tricked into opening a specially crafted file, an attacker could cause a denial of service or possibly other unspecified actions. This issue does not affect Ubuntu 8.04.
(CVE-2007-6109)

Steve Grubb discovered that the vcdiff script as included in Emacs created temporary files in an insecure way when used with SCCS. Local users could exploit a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2008-1694).

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.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
198414	RHEL 5 : emacs (Unpatched Vulnerability)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
198350	RHEL 4 : emacs (Unpatched Vulnerability)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical
36539	Mandriva Linux Security Advisory : emacs (MDVSA-2008:096)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	medium
32187	Ubuntu 6.06 LTS / 7.04 / 7.10 / 8.04 LTS : emacs21, emacs22 vulnerabilities (USN-607-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2008-1694

medium

Tenable Plugins

high

critical

medium

critical