Apache Tomcat Privilege Escalation
Posted on 14 March 2023
This Metasploit module exploits a vulnerability in RedHat based systems where improper file permissions are applied to /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tomcat.conf for Apache Tomcat versions before 7.0.54-8. The configuration files in tmpfiles.d are used by systemd-tmpfiles to manage temporary files including their creation. With this weak permission, you are able to inject commands into the systemd-tmpfiles service to write a cron job to execute a payload. systemd-tmpfiles is executed by default on boot on RedHat-based systems through systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service. Depending on the system in use, the execution of systemd-tmpfiles could also be triggered by other services, cronjobs, startup scripts etc. This module was tested against Tomcat 7.0.54-3 on Fedora 21.
