CVE-2020-13696 Path traversal in n/a

Medium 4.4 Published 8 Jun 2020 Updated 4 Aug 2024

A local attacker can exploit a path traversal flaw in the setuid-root v4l-conf utility to read arbitrary files or trigger unsafe file operations.

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

What is CVE-2020-13696?

CVE-2020-13696 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 8 Jun 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An issue was discovered in LinuxTV xawtv before 3.107. The function dev_open() in v4l-conf.c does not perform sufficient checks to prevent an unprivileged caller of the program from opening unintended filesystem paths. This allows a local attacker with access to the v4l-conf setuid-root program to test for the existence of arbitrary files and to trigger an open on arbitrary files with mode O_RDWR. To achieve this, relative path components need to be added to the device path, as demonstrated by a v4l-conf -c /dev/../root/.bash_history command.

Weakness: CWE-863

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-13696?

It affects 6 products.

Linux distribution packages (5)

`xawtv` SUSE:Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension 12 SP4	All versions	`3.103-6.3.1`
`xawtv` SUSE:Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension 12 SP5	All versions	`3.103-6.3.1`
`xawtv` SUSE:Package Hub 15 SP1	All versions	`3.103-bp151.4.3.1`
`xawtv` openSUSE:Leap 15.1	All versions	`3.103-lp151.3.3.1`
`xawtv` openSUSE:Tumbleweed	All versions	`3.107-2.5`

Products include Canonical Ubuntu Linux, Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Linuxtv Xawtv, Opensuse Backports Sle, Opensuse Leap.

How do I fix CVE-2020-13696?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2020-13696 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-13696 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Canonical Ubuntu Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2020-13696, DLA-2246-1, GHSA-v59g-m57m-jww7, MGASA-2020-0257, SUSE-SU-2020:1712-1, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-13696 and 4 more.