Intro ----- Blogtorrent is a collection of PHP scripts which are designed to make it simple to host files for transfer via bittorrent. Whilst it is not normal to report security problems in "preview" releases of software this software was covered prominently upon Slashdot and could be widely used, so I feel it's a legitimate target. Problem ------- One of the scripts in the distribution doesn't correctly sanitize it's inputs, before using one of them to read and serve a file from the local system. This can be exploited to remotely download any file upon the webserver which is readable by the UID which the webserver is running as. The code in question is contained in btdownload.php and looks like this: -- echo file_get_contents('torrents/'.$_GET['file']); -- Example ------- The following URL can be used to download a file: htp://example.org/battletorrent/btdownload.php?type=torrent&file=../../etc/passwd (Adjust the ".."'s and the filename to suit your taste). Fix --- Whilst no new release is planned to address this hole the authors did commit a simple fix to their CVS repository. This can be obtained from here: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/battletorrent/btorrent_server/btdownload.php?r1=1.6&r2=1.7 (The patch was committed less than a day after the hole was privately reported to them, making them a responsive bunch). Steve -- # The Debian Security Audit Project. http://www.debian.org/security/audit # Setuid Software Lists http://www.setuid.org/