A 15-Year-Old Unpatched Python bug potentially impacts over 350,000 projects

More than 350,000 open source projects can be potentially affected by an unpatched Python vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2007-4559 (CVSS score: 6.8), that was discovered 15 years ago.

The issue is a Directory traversal vulnerability that resides in the ‘extract’ and ‘extractall’ functions in the tarfile module in Python. A user-assisted remote attacker can trigger the issue to overwrite arbitrary files via a .. (dot dot) sequence in filenames in a TAR archive, a related issue to CVE-2001-1267.

“While investigating an unrelated vulnerability, Trellix Advanced Research Center stumbled across a vulnerability in Python’s tarfile module. Initially we thought we had found a new zero-day vulnerability. As we dug into the issue, we realized this was in fact CVE-2007-4559.” reads the post published by security firm Trellix.”The vulnerability is a path traversal attack in the extract and extractall functions in the tarfile module that allow an attacker to overwrite arbitrary files by adding the “..” sequence to filenames in a TAR archive.”

The experts pointed out that the issue was underestimated, it initially received a CVSS score of 6.8, however, in most cases an attacker exploit this issue to gain code execution from the file write. Trellix shared a video PoC that shows how to get code execution by exploiting Universal Radio Hacker:

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Mots-clés : cybersécurité, sécurité informatique, protection des données, menaces cybernétiques, veille cyber, analyse de vulnérabilités, sécurité des réseaux, cyberattaques, conformité RGPD, NIS2, DORA, PCIDSS, DEVSECOPS, eSANTE, intelligence artificielle, IA en cybersécurité, apprentissage automatique, deep learning, algorithmes de sécurité, détection des anomalies, systèmes intelligents, automatisation de la sécurité, IA pour la prévention des cyberattaques.