SQ18115
Detected Linux executable files that may be susceptible to binary planting while using known global or user-writable directories.
| priority | CI/CD status | severity | effort | RL level | RL assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | pass | medium | medium | None | hardening: warning Reason: execution hijacking risks |
About the issue
On Linux, the user may override the normal library search path by specifying RPATH or RUNPATH. This will force the dynamic linker to prioritize user-specified directories when searching for shared libraries. Binary planting is a technique that allows the attacker to execute malicious code by placing it into one of the executable's library search directories.
How to resolve the issue
- Avoid manually specifying the library search path.
- If that is not possible, avoid setting library search path(s) to directories that are typically user-writable, such as /tmp or /home.
Incidence statistics
ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes.
For every repository, the chart shows the percentage of projects that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many projects were found to have the specific issue described on this page.
The percentages are calculated from the total amount of packages analyzed:
- RubyGems: 174K
- Nuget: 189K
- PyPi: 403K
- NPM: 2.1M
Recommended reading
- Binary Planting (External resource - OWASP)
- rpath vs runpath (External resource - Medium)