Last updated 25 August 2025
Apport creates a world writable lock file with root ownership in the world writable /var/lock/apport directory. If the apport/ directory does not exist (this is not uncommon as /var/lock is a tmpfs), it will create the directory, otherwise it will simply continue execution using the existing directory. This allows for a symlink attack if an attacker were to create a symlink at /var/lock/apport, changing apport's lock file location. This file could then be used to escalate privileges, for example. Fixed in versions 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.14, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.8 and 2.20.11-0ubuntu22.
Last updated 25 August 2025
Apport before versions 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.29+esm1, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.19, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.7, 2.20.10-0ubuntu27.1, 2.20.11-0ubuntu5 contained a TOCTTOU vulnerability when reading the users ~/.apport-ignore.xml file, which allows a local attacker to replace this file with a symlink to any other file on the system and so cause Apport to include the contents of this other file in the resulting crash report. The crash report could then be read by that user either by causing it to be uploaded and reported to Launchpad, or by leveraging some other vulnerability to read the resulting crash report, and so allow the user to read arbitrary files on the system.
Apport does not properly handle crashes originating from a PID namespace allowing local users to create certain files as root which an attacker could leverage to perform a denial of service via resource exhaustion, possibly gain root privileges, or escape from containers. The issamens() function returns True when /proc/<global pid>/ does not exist in order to indicate that the crash should be handled in the global namespace rather than inside of a container. However, the portion of the data/apport code that decides whether or not to forward a crash to a container does not always replace sys.argv[1] with the value stored in the hostpid variable when /proc/<global pid>/ does not exist which results in the container pid being used in the global namespace. This flaw affects versions 2.20.8-0ubuntu4 through 2.20.9-0ubuntu7, 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.7, 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.8, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.15 through 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.17, and 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.28.
Apport through 2.20.7 does not properly handle core dumps from setuid binaries allowing local users to create certain files as root which an attacker could leverage to perform a denial of service via resource exhaustion or possibly gain root privileges. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2015-1324.
Apport before 2.13 does not properly handle crashes originating from a PID namespace allowing local users to create certain files as root which an attacker could leverage to perform a denial of service via resource exhaustion, possibly gain root privileges, or escape from containers.
An issue was discovered in Apport through 2.20.x. In apport/report.py, Apport sets the ExecutablePath field and it then uses the path to run package specific hooks without protecting against path traversal. This allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted .crash file.