A race condition was found in the abrt-dbus D-Bus service's ChownProblemDir method. ChownProblemDir opens the dump directory with DD_OPEN_READONLY and calls dd_chown to change ownership of all files to the caller's uid, succeeding even while post-create event handlers hold a write lock. This allows an attacker to gain filesystem-level control of the dump directory while privileged event scripts are still running.
The following practices would help for avoiding exposure and mitigate this flaw:
- Disable or remove ABRT if it is not required. On RHEL 8 systems where ABRT is installed, it can be disabled with: systemctl disable --now abrtd.service abrt-journal-core.service abrt-oops.service abrt-xorg.service
- On Fedora systems, consider using systemd-coredump instead of ABRT for crash handling
- Restrict local user access to systems running ABRT, as this vulnerability requires local access