Affected: Bitnami: rclone

Rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Insecure handling of symlinks with --links and --metadata in rclone while copying to local disk allows unprivileged users to indirectly modify ownership and permissions on symlink target files when a superuser or privileged process performs a copy. This vulnerability could enable privilege escalation and unauthorized access to critical system files, compromising system integrity, confidentiality, and availability. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.68.2.

Rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Insecure handling of symlinks with --links and --metadata in rclone while copying to local disk allows unprivileged users to indirectly modify ownership and permissions on symlink target files when a superuser or privileged process performs a copy. This vulnerability could enable privilege escalation and unauthorized access to critical system files, compromising system integrity, confidentiality, and availability. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.68.2.

Affected: Go: github.com/rclone/rclone

### **tl;dr:**

unprivileged user creates a symlink to /etc/sudoers, /etc/shadow or similar and waits for a privileged user or process to copy/backup/mirror users data (using `--links` and `--metadata`). unprivileged user now owns /etc/sudoers.

### Summary

Insecure handling of symlinks with `--links` and `--metadata` in rclone while copying to local disk allows unprivileged users to indirectly modify ownership and permissions on symlink target files when a superuser or privileged process performs a copy. This vulnerability could enable privilege escalation and unauthorized access to critical system files (e.g., /etc/shadow), compromising system integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

For instance, an unprivileged user could set a symlink to a sensitive file within their home directory, waiting for an administrator or automated process (e.g., a cron job running with elevated privileges) to copy their files with rclone using the --links and --metadata options. Upon copying, rclone will incorrectly apply chown and chmod to the symlink’s target file rather than just the symlink itself, resulting in ownership and permission changes on the sensitive file.

### Who is affected

If you are not using `--metadata` **and** `--links` **and** copying files **to** the local backend you are not affected by this issue.

If you are using `--metadata` and `-links` and copying files to the local backend but not as a superuser, then this will manifest itself as a bug by setting incorre…

govulncheck-vulndb-0.0.20241119T173509-1.1 on GA media

Affected: Ubuntu:Pro:24.04:LTS: rclone, Ubuntu:25.10: rclone, Ubuntu:Pro:26.04:LTS: rclone

Rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Insecure handling of symlinks with --links and --metadata in rclone while copying to local disk allows unprivileged users to indirectly modify ownership and permissions on symlink target files when a superuser or privileged process performs a copy. This vulnerability could enable privilege escalation and unauthorized access to critical system files, compromising system integrity, confidentiality, and availability. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.68.2.

Ein Angreifer kann mehrere Schwachstellen in rclone ausnutzen, um Sicherheitsvorkehrungen zu umgehen, um Informationen offenzulegen oder zu manipulieren, sowie um einen Denial of Service herbeizuführen.