TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 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.

  - texlive: mpost allows to run non-whitelisted external programs (CVE-2016-10243)

  - mktexlsr revision 22855 through revision 36625 as packaged in texlive allows local users to write to     arbitrary files via a symlink attack. (CVE-2015-5700)

  - mktexlsr revision 36855, and before revision 36626 as packaged in texlive allows local users to write to     arbitrary files via a symlink attack. NOTE: this vulnerability exists due to the reversion of a fix of     CVE-2015-5700. (CVE-2015-5701)

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 SUSE Linux SLES12 / SLES_SAP12 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the SUSE-SU-2024:1203-1 advisory.

  - TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in     shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file. (CVE-2016-10243)

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

According to the version of the texlive packages installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability :

  - TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary     commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in     shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config     file.(CVE-2016-10243)

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS 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-201709-07 (Kpathsea: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code)

    It was discovered that the mpost program from the shell_escape_commands       list is capable of executing arbitrary external programs during the       conversion of .tex files. The responsible function is runpopen()       (texmfmp.c).
  Impact :

    A remote attacker, by enticing a user to open a specially crafted .tex       file, could possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the       process.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

The remote Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-3401-1 advisory.

    It was discovered that TeX Live incorrectly handled certain system commands. If a user were tricked into     processing a specially crafted TeX file, a remote attacker could execute arbitrary code.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

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

Security fix for CVE-2016-10243

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

The TeX system allows for calling external programs from within the TeX source code. This has been restricted to a small set of programs since a long time ago.

Unfortunately it turned out that one program in the list, mpost, allows in turn to specify other programs to be run, which allows arbitrary code execution when compiling a TeX document.

For Debian 7 'Wheezy', these problems have been fixed in version 2012.20120611-5+deb7u1.

We recommend that you upgrade your texlive-base packages.

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

It was discovered that texlive-base, the TeX Live package which provides the essential TeX programs and files, whitelists mpost as an external program to be run from within the TeX source code (called \write18). Since mpost allows to specify other programs to be run, an attacker can take advantage of this flaw for arbitrary code execution when compiling a TeX document.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
198823	RHEL 7 : texlive (Unpatched Vulnerability)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical
193240	SUSE SLES12 Security Update : texlive-specs-k (SUSE-SU-2024:1203-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	critical
129255	EulerOS 2.0 SP3 : texlive (EulerOS-SA-2019-2062)	Nessus	Huawei Local Security Checks	critical
128796	EulerOS 2.0 SP2 : texlive (EulerOS-SA-2019-1873)	Nessus	Huawei Local Security Checks	critical
103275	GLSA-201709-07 : Kpathsea: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	critical
102697	Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS : TeX Live vulnerability (USN-3401-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
101700	Fedora 26 : 6:texlive (2017-a8add6c46c)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
99057	Fedora 25 : 6:texlive (2017-b72cafa5b4)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
97614	Debian DLA-847-1 : texlive-base security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
97589	Debian DSA-3803-1 : texlive-base - security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical

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CVE-2016-10243

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