CVE-2020-16120

Unprivileged overlay + shiftfs read access

State
Published
Severity
5.1 Medium
Published
Feb 10, 2021
Updated
Sep 16, 2024
Reserved
Jul 29, 2020

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Overlayfs did not properly perform permission checking when copying up files in an overlayfs and could be exploited from within a user namespace, if, for example, unprivileged user namespaces were allowed. It was possible to have a file not readable by an unprivileged user to be copied to a mountpoint controlled by the user, like a removable device. This was introduced in kernel version 4.19 by commit d1d04ef ("ovl: stack file ops"). This was fixed in kernel version 5.8 by commits 56230d9 ("ovl: verify permissions in ovl_path_open()"), 48bd024 ("ovl: switch to mounter creds in readdir") and 05acefb ("ovl: check permission to open real file"). Additionally, commits 130fdbc ("ovl: pass correct flags for opening real directory") and 292f902 ("ovl: call secutiry hook in ovl_real_ioctl()") in kernel 5.8 might also be desired or necessary. These additional commits introduced a regression in overlay mounts within user namespaces which prevented access to files with ownership outside of the user namespace. This regression was mitigated by subsequent commit b6650da ("ovl: do not fail because of O_NOATIMEi") in kernel 5.11.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.1 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:Ncanonical

Weaknesses

  • CWE-266 Incorrect Privilege Assignment

Affected Products

ProductVersions
Linux kernelLinux kernel
  • 5.11-stable to before 5.11.0Affected

References

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