libgtop: Privilege escalation

Background

libgtop facilitates the libgtop_daemon, which is used by GNOME to obtain information about remote systems.

Description

Liu Qishuai discovered that glibtop_get_proc_map_s() in sysdeps/linux/procmap.c does not properly allocate memory for storing a filename, allowing certain filenames to cause the buffer to overflow on the stack.

Impact

By tricking a victim into executing an application that uses the libgtop library (e.g. libgtop_daemon or gnome-system-monitor), a local attacker could specify a specially crafted filename to be used by libgtop causing a buffer overflow and possibly execute arbitrary code with the rights of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All libgtop users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=gnome-base/libgtop-2.14.6"