SimGear: incorrect authorization allowing arbitrary file write (CVE-2025-0781) #shorts

Summary

Today, we dive into CVE-2025-0781, a critical vulnerability identified in FlightGear's SimGear up to version 2020.3.19. This vulnerability, associated with GitLab, allows an attacker to bypass sandboxing protections and escalate their privileges by writing to unauthorized file paths.

Product details

The products affected by this vulnerability are FlightGear and SimGear. These open-source projects are widely used for flight simulation, providing tools and environments for both developers and simulation enthusiasts. Specifically, SimGear versions up to 2020.3.19 are vulnerable.

Vulnerability type summary

CVE-2025-0781 is categorized under CWE-863, which is known as 'Incorrect Authorization'. This vulnerability type occurs when a system's authorization mechanism fails to enforce correct authorization policies, allowing attackers to perform actions they should not be authorized to execute.

Details of the vulnerability

The vulnerability exploits the sandboxing of Nasal scripts within SimGear, allowing attackers to bypass restrictions and write data to any file path that the user has modification permissions for at the operating-system level. This can lead to elevated privileges as attackers can manipulate files and potentially gain unauthorized access or control.

Conclusion

To mitigate this critical vulnerability, users of FlightGear's SimGear should update to the latest available version, which includes necessary security fixes. Fedora 40 has released these updates, and Fedora 41 comes with FlightGear 2025-b3322818a5, addressing the CVE-2025-0781 vulnerability. Users and administrators must ensure their systems are up to date to avoid compromise.

Watch the full video on YouTube: CVE-2025-0781

Remediation and exploitation details

This chain involves the following actors

This following systems are involved

Attack entry point

Remediation actions

Exploitation actions

Related Content

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CVE database technical details

CVE ID
CVE-2025-0781
Description
An attacker can bypass the sandboxing of Nasal scripts and arbitrarily write to any file path that the user has permission to modify at the operating-system level.
Provider
GitLab
CWE / problem types
CWE-863: Incorrect Authorization
Affected Software Versions
FlightGear:SimGear:[{'version': '0', 'status': 'affected', 'lessThanOrEqual': '2020.3.19', 'versionType': 'semver'}]
Date Published
2025-01-28T16:34:21.881Z
Last Updated
2025-02-12T20:01:11.702Z