# CVE-2007-5159: Privilege escalation in n/a

> Local users in the fuse group can escalate privileges to read and write arbitrary block devices due to incorrect setuid permissions on the mount utility.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.6 (`AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 1 Oct 2007
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2007-5159, GHSA-r584-r284-xhg9

## What is CVE-2007-5159?

CVE-2007-5159 is a medium-severity vulnerability in n/a, published on 1 Oct 2007. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

The ntfs-3g package before 1.913-2.fc7 in Fedora 7, and an ntfs-3g package in Ubuntu 7.10/Gutsy, assign incorrect permissions (setuid root) to mount.ntfs-3g, which allows local users with fuse group membership to read from and write to arbitrary block devices, possibly involving a file descriptor leak.

Weakness: CWE-264

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2007-5159?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Ntfs-3g Ntfs-3g.

## How do I fix CVE-2007-5159?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2007-5159 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2007-5159 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2007-5159 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2007-5159 is a medium-severity vulnerability in n/a, published on 1 Oct 2007. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2007-5159 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: n/a. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-5159/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-5159/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2007-5159
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2007-5159
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2007-5159

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-5159/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.