A vulnerability has been found in Phusion Passenger up to 5.3.1 and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code of the component SpawningKit. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a link following vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-59. The product attempts to access a file based on the filename, but it does not properly prevent that filename from identifying a link or shortcut that resolves to an unintended resource. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

During the spawning of a malicious Passenger-managed application, SpawningKit in Phusion Passenger 5.3.x before 5.3.2 allows such applications to replace key files or directories in the spawning communication directory with symlinks. This then could result in arbitrary reads and writes, which in turn can result in information disclosure and privilege escalation.

The bug was discovered 06/13/2018. The weakness was released 06/17/2018 (Website). The advisory is shared at blog.phusion.nl. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2018-12026 since 06/07/2018. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available.

The vulnerability was handled as a non-public zero-day exploit for at least 4 days. During that time the estimated underground price was around $0-$5k. The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 111225 (GLSA-201807-02 : Passenger: Multiple Vulnerabilities), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment. It is assigned to the family Gentoo Local Security Checks and running in the context l.

Upgrading to version 5.3.2 eliminates this vulnerability. A possible mitigation has been published 2 months after the disclosure of the vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (111225). Entries connected to this vulnerability are available at 119642, 119643 and 119644.

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• Phusion

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• Passenger

Version

• 5.3.0
• 5.3.1

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CPE 2.2info

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