Blam: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code

Background

Blam is an RSS and Atom feed reader for GNOME written in C#.

Description

The “/usr/bin/blam” script sets the “LD_LIBRARY_PATH” environment variable incorrectly, which might result in the current working directory (.) being included when searching for dynamically linked libraries of the Mono Runtime application.

Impact

A local attacker could entice a user to run Blam in a directory containing a specially crafted library file which could result in the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running Blam.

Workaround

Do not run Blam from an untrusted working directory.

Resolution

All Blam users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-news/blam-1.8.4"