Secunia

Larry W. Cashdollar has reported two security issues in the PatchLink Update client for Unix, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to truncate arbitrary files and to gain escalated privileges.

1) The "logtrimmer" utility uses the "/tmp/patchlink.tmp" temporary file in an insecure manner, which can be exploited to truncate arbitrary files via symlink attacks.

2) The "rebootTask" script uses the "/tmp/plshutdown" temporary file in an insecure manner, which can be exploited via symlink attacks in combination with a race condition to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

The security issues are reported in versions 6.2094, 6.3450, and 6.4102. Other versions prior to PatchLink Update Server 6.4 Service Pack 1 (SP1) may also be affected.

Solution
Apply vendor patches.
Further details available in Customer Area

Provided and/or discovered by
Larry W. Cashdollar

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
http://support.lumension.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=530
http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2008/Jan/0376.html

Deep Links
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