SECUNIA ADVISORY ID: SA22235

VERIFY ADVISORY: http://secunia.com/advisories/22235/

CRITICAL: Less critical

IMPACT: Security Bypass

WHERE: Local system

SOFTWARE:
PHP 5.1.x - http://secunia.com/product/6796/
PHP 5.0.x - http://secunia.com/product/3919/
PHP 4.4.x - http://secunia.com/product/5768/
PHP 4.3.x - http://secunia.com/product/922/
PHP 4.2.x - http://secunia.com/product/105/
PHP 4.1.x - http://secunia.com/product/1654/
PHP 4.0.x - http://secunia.com/product/1655/

DESCRIPTION: Stefan Esser has reported a vulnerability in PHP, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to bypass certain security restrictions. The vulnerability is caused due to a race condition in the handling of symlinks and can be exploited to bypass the open_basedir protection mechanism. The vulnerability has been reported in PHP4 and PHP5.

SOLUTION: Disable the "symlink()" function in php.ini.

PROVIDED AND/OR DISCOVERED BY: Stefan Esser

ORIGINAL ADVISORY: http://www.hardened-php.net/advisory_082006.132.html