HD Moore of Rapid7 discovered a symlink attack in Wget, a command-line utility to retrieve files via HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. The vulnerability allows to create arbitrary files on the user's system when Wget runs in recursive mode against a malicious FTP server. Arbitrary file creation may override content of user's files or permit remote code execution with the user privilege. This update changes the default setting in Wget such that it no longer creates local symbolic links, but rather traverses them and retrieves the pointed-to file in such a retrieval.

For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 1.13.4-3+deb7u2. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 1.16-1. We recommend that you upgrade your wget packages.

Wget is a network utility to retrieve files from the web using HTTP(S) and FTP, the two most widely used internet protocols. It works non-interactively, so it will work in the background, after having logged off. The program supports recursive retrieval of web-authoring pages as well as FTP sites -- you can use Wget to make mirrors of archives and home pages or to travel the web like a WWW robot.

wget on Debian Linux

This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.

• http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-3062.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25