CVE-2017-16355

Publication date 14 December 2017

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

In agent/Core/SpawningKit/Spawner.h in Phusion Passenger 5.1.10 (fixed in Passenger Open Source 5.1.11 and Passenger Enterprise 5.1.10), if Passenger is running as root, it is possible to list the contents of arbitrary files on a system by symlinking a file named REVISION from the application root folder to a file of choice and querying passenger-status --show=xml.

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
passenger	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	21.10 impish	Not affected
	21.04 hirsute	Not affected
	20.10 groovy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	19.10 eoan	Not affected
	19.04 disco	Fixed 5.0.30-1+deb9u1build0.19.04.1
	18.10 cosmic	Fixed 5.0.30-1+deb9u1build0.18.10.1
	18.04 LTS bionic	Fixed 5.0.30-1+deb9u1build0.18.04.1
	17.10 artful	Ignored end of life
	17.04 zesty	Ignored end of life
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 5.0.27-2ubuntu0.1~esm1
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release
ruby-passenger	22.04 LTS jammy	Not in release
	21.10 impish	Not in release
	21.04 hirsute	Not in release
	20.10 groovy	Not in release
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release
	19.10 eoan	Not in release
	19.04 disco	Not in release
	18.10 cosmic	Not in release
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not in release
	17.10 artful	Not in release
	17.04 zesty	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release

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Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
passenger	Upstream: 4043718 Upstream: 947af42

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	4.7 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	None
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-5261-1
Phusion Passenger vulnerabilities
1 February 2022