CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-17534 — Apache Html/Java Api security vulnerability

High CVSS 7

There exists a race condition between the deletion of the temporary file and the creation of the temporary directory in `webkit` subproject of HTML/Java API version 1.7. A similar vulnerability has recently been disclosed in other Java projects and the fix in HTML/Java API version 1.7.1 follows theirs: To avoid local privilege escalation version 1.7.1 creates the temporary directory atomically without dealing with the temporary file: https://github.com/apache/netbeans-html4j/commit/fa70e507e5555e1adb4f6518479fc408a7abd0e6

Severity
High
CVSS
7 (3.1)
Published
2021-01-11
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
java/maven
Weaknesses
CWE-362

Affected products

  • apache / html/java_api / 1.7

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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