pdfjam creates the (1) pdf90, (2) pdfjoin, and (3) pdfnup files with a predictable name, which allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack.

PDFjam scripts previously create temporary files with predictable names, and are also susceptible to the search path being modified.
This update fixes the two issues.

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

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200903-05 (PDFjam: Multiple vulnerabilities)

    Martin Vaeth reported multiple untrusted search path vulnerabilities     (CVE-2008-5843).
    Marcus Meissner of the SUSE Security Team reported that     temporary files are created with a predictable name (CVE-2008-5743).
  Impact :

    A local attacker could place a specially crafted Python module in the     current working directory or the /var/tmp directory, and entice a user     to run the PDFjam scripts, leading to the execution of arbitrary code     with the privileges of the user running the application. A local     attacker could also leverage symlink attacks to overwrite arbitrary     files.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

Secunia reports :

Some security issues have been reported in PDFjam, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to perform certain actions with escalated privileges.

The security issues are caused due to the 'pdf90', 'pdfjoin', and 'pdfnup' scripts using temporary files in an insecure manner. This can be exploited to overwrite arbitrary files via symlink attacks.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
36287	Fedora 10 : pdfjam-1.21-1.fc10 (2009-2651)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
35927	Fedora 9 : pdfjam-1.21-1.fc9 (2009-2655)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
35795	GLSA-200903-05 : PDFjam: Multiple vulnerabilities	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	medium
35340	FreeBSD : pdfjam -- insecure temporary files (a02c9595-e018-11dd-a765-0030843d3802)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2008-5743

medium

Tenable Plugins

medium

medium

medium

medium