uptimed: Root Privilege Escalation

Background

uptimed is a system uptime record daemon that keeps track of your highest uptimes.

Description

Via unnecessary file ownership modifications in the pkg_postinst ebuild phase, the uptimed user could change arbitrary files to be owned by the uptimed user at emerge-time.

Impact

The uptimed user could achieve root privileges when the uptimed package is emerged.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All uptimed users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-misc/uptimed-0.4.6-r1"