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Fencer Intel
high 7.0

CVE-2020-10174 json

init_tmp in TeeJee.FileSystem.vala in Timeshift before 20.03 unsafely reuses a preexisting temporary directory in the predictable location…

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-2637

cvss
7.0
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 20%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

init_tmp in TeeJee.FileSystem.vala in Timeshift before 20.03 unsafely reuses a preexisting temporary directory in the predictable location /tmp/timeshift. It follows symlinks in this location or uses directories owned by unprivileged users. Because Timeshift also executes scripts under this location, an attacker can attempt to win a race condition to replace scripts created by Timeshift with attacker-controlled scripts. Upon success, an attacker-controlled script is executed with full root privileges. This logic is practically always triggered when Timeshift runs regardless of the command-line arguments used.

Patch / fix

  • timeshift_project timeshift 20.03
  • timeshift Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 20.03+ds-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-10174

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2020-10174 updated cvss 7.0

timeshift: Arbitrary local code execution due to unsafe usage of temporary directory in /tmp/timeshift

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.