4.4
CVSSv3

CVE-2020-16120

Published: 10/02/2021 Updated: 18/11/2021
CVSS v2 Base Score: 2.1 | Impact Score: 2.9 | Exploitability Score: 3.9
CVSS v3 Base Score: 4.4 | Impact Score: 3.6 | Exploitability Score: 0.8
VMScore: 187
Vector: AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Vulnerability Summary

Overlayfs did not properly perform permission checking when copying up files in an overlayfs and could be exploited from within a user namespace, if, for example, unprivileged user namespaces were allowed. It was possible to have a file not readable by an unprivileged user to be copied to a mountpoint controlled by the user, like a removable device. This was introduced in kernel version 4.19 by commit d1d04ef ("ovl: stack file ops"). This was fixed in kernel version 5.8 by commits 56230d9 ("ovl: verify permissions in ovl_path_open()"), 48bd024 ("ovl: switch to mounter creds in readdir") and 05acefb ("ovl: check permission to open real file"). Additionally, commits 130fdbc ("ovl: pass correct flags for opening real directory") and 292f902 ("ovl: call secutiry hook in ovl_real_ioctl()") in kernel 5.8 might also be desired or necessary. These additional commits introduced a regression in overlay mounts within user namespaces which prevented access to files with ownership outside of the user namespace. This regression was mitigated by subsequent commit b6650da ("ovl: do not fail because of O_NOATIMEi") in kernel 5.11.

Vulnerability Trend

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linux linux kernel

canonical ubuntu linux 14.04

canonical ubuntu linux 16.04

canonical ubuntu linux 18.04

canonical ubuntu linux 20.04

Vendor Advisories

Giuseppe Scrivano discovered that overlayfs did not properly perform permission checking when copying up files in an overlayfs, and can be exploited from within a user namespace, if, for example, unprivileged user namespaces are allowed An attacker can abuse this to get read access to files on the system that they would not normally be permitted t ...