A vulnerability in the tail utility of uutils coreutils allows for the exfiltration of sensitive file contents when using the --follow=name option. Unlike GNU tail, the uutils implementation continues to monitor a path after it has been replaced by a symbolic link, subsequently outputting the contents of the link's target. In environments where a privileged user (e.g., root) monitors a log directory, a local attacker with write access to that directory can replace a log file with a symlink to a sensitive system file (such as /etc/shadow), causing tail to disclose the contents of the sensitive file.

Affected: crates.io: coreutils

A vulnerability in the tail utility of uutils coreutils allows for the exfiltration of sensitive file contents when using the --follow=name option. Unlike GNU tail, the uutils implementation continues to monitor a path after it has been replaced by a symbolic link, subsequently outputting the contents of the link's target. In environments where a privileged user (e.g., root) monitors a log directory, a local attacker with write access to that directory can replace a log file with a symlink to a sensitive system file (such as /etc/shadow), causing tail to disclose the contents of the sensitive file.

Affected: Ubuntu:24.04:LTS: rust-coreutils, Ubuntu:25.10: rust-coreutils, Ubuntu:26.04:LTS: rust-coreutils

A vulnerability in the tail utility of uutils coreutils allows for the exfiltration of sensitive file contents when using the --follow=name option. Unlike GNU tail, the uutils implementation continues to monitor a path after it has been replaced by a symbolic link, subsequently outputting the contents of the link's target. In environments where a privileged user (e.g., root) monitors a log directory, a local attacker with write access to that directory can replace a log file with a symlink to a sensitive system file (such as /etc/shadow), causing tail to disclose the contents of the sensitive file.