CVE-2023-52138 Path traversal via crafted cpio archives in Engrampa archivers
Attackers can achieve remote code execution by tricking users into extracting malicious CPIO archives that exploit symlink handling flaws in Engrampa.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-52138?
CVE-2023-52138 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in mate-desktop engrampa, published on 5 Feb 2024. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
Engrampa is an archive manager for the MATE environment. Engrampa is found to be vulnerable to a Path Traversal vulnerability that can be leveraged to achieve full Remote Command Execution (RCE) on the target. While handling CPIO archives, the Engrampa Archive manager follows symlink, cpio by default will follow stored symlinks while extracting and the Archiver will not check the symlink location, which leads to arbitrary file writes to unintended locations. When the victim extracts the archive, the attacker can craft a malicious cpio or ISO archive to achieve RCE on the target system. This vulnerability was fixed in commit 63d5dfa.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52138?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Mate-Desktop Engrampa.
How do I fix CVE-2023-52138?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2023-52138 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2023-52138 exists.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52138, DLA-3741-1, DSA-5625-1, GHSA-c98h-v39w-3r7v, OESA-2024-1588, OESA-2024-1589 and 4 more.