CVE-2014-1420: 
Linux Ubuntu vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2014-1420 is a security vulnerability discovered in Ubuntu UI Toolkit's StateSaver component. The issue was reported on July 24, 2014, and affected desktop systems where StateSaver would serialize data in files under the /tmp directory. The vulnerability was fixed in version 1.1.1188+14.10.20140813.4-0ubuntu1 (Ubuntu Security).

The vulnerability stems from StateSaver's use of QSettings under the hood to persist data on disk, which issues a plain QFile::open(QFile::ReadWrite) call to open files without setting the O_EXCL flag. The component would serialize data on /tmp/ files and open these files without proper security flags. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.x score of 3.3 (Low), with a vector string of CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N (Ubuntu Security).

An attacker could potentially expose sensitive data that was serialized in temporary files. The impact was primarily limited to desktop systems, as on devices, confined applications have their own TMPDIR, which mitigated the issue (Launchpad Bug).

The vulnerability could be exploited through symlink attacks due to the improper file handling. The attack requires local access and low privileges to exploit. This was partially mitigated by symlink and hardlink restrictions in Ubuntu (Ubuntu Security).

The issue was fixed in version 1.1.1188+14.10.20140813.4-0ubuntu1 by changing the storage location from temporary directory to runtime location. The fix involved modifying the StateSaver to save state files to runtime location instead of the /tmp folder (Launchpad Revision).