CVE-2023-49797

Local Privilege Escalation in pyinstaller on Windows

State
Published
Severity
8.8 High
Published
Dec 9, 2023
Updated
Feb 13, 2025
Reserved
Nov 30, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

PyInstaller bundles a Python application and all its dependencies into a single package. A PyInstaller built application, elevated as a privileged process, may be tricked by an unprivileged attacker into deleting files the unprivileged user does not otherwise have access to. A user is affected if **all** the following are satisfied: 1. The user runs an application containing either `matplotlib` or `win32com`. 2. The application is ran as administrator (or at least a user with higher privileges than the attacker). 3. The user's temporary directory is not locked to that specific user (most likely due to `TMP`/`TEMP` environment variables pointing to an unprotected, arbitrary, non default location). Either: A. The attacker is able to very carefully time the replacement of a temporary file with a symlink. This switch must occur exactly between `shutil.rmtree()`'s builtin symlink check and the deletion itself B: The application was built with Python 3.7.x or earlier which has no protection against Directory Junctions links. The vulnerability has been addressed in PR #7827 which corresponds to `pyinstaller >= 5.13.1`. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:HGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-379 Creation of Temporary File in Directory with Insecure Permissions
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

Affected Products

ProductVersions
pyinstallerpyinstaller
  • < 5.13.1Affected

References

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