What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-10174

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-03-05 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-59

Description

init_tmp in TeeJee.FileSystem.vala in Timeshift before 20.03 unsafely reuses a preexisting temporary directory in the predictable location /tmp/timeshift. It follows symlinks in this location or uses directories owned by unprivileged users. Because Timeshift also executes scripts under this location, an attacker can attempt to win a race condition to replace scripts created by Timeshift with attacker-controlled scripts. Upon success, an attacker-controlled script is executed with full root privileges. This logic is practically always triggered when Timeshift runs regardless of the command-line arguments used.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 19.10
• Fedoraproject Fedora: 30, 31, 32
• Timeshift Project Timeshift: before 20.03 — fixed in 20.03

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Timeshift Project Timeshift 20.03. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/03/06/3
• https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1165802
• https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift/commit/335b3d5398079278b8f7094c77bfd148b315b462
• https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift/releases/tag/v20.03
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/AAOFXT64CEUMJE3723JDJWTEQWQUCYMD/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/SXDEPC52G46U6I7GLQNFLZXVSM7V2HYY/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TXXYQFSZ5P6ZMNFIDBAQKBFZIR2T7ZLL/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4312-1/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/03/06/3
• https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1165802
• https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift/commit/335b3d5398079278b8f7094c77bfd148b315b462
• https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift/releases/tag/v20.03

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