SSHFS Symlink Escape: Rogue SFTP Server → Local File Read/Write

Summary

SSHFS is a network filesystem client for connecting to SSH servers. Prior to version 3.7.6, a rogue SFTP server can return absolute symlink targets or relative targets containing parent-directory components that SSHFS passes through FUSE for resolution by the client kernel against the local filesystem. The documented transform_symlinks mitigation does not contain relative targets because transform_symlink() returns early at sshfs.c:2181, while sshfs_readlink() at sshfs.c:2234 to sshfs.c:2236 otherwise copies the server-supplied link target to the kernel. A victim or victim-side tool that follows such a link through ordinary operations such as cp, rsync, backup tooling, or an editor can disclose readable local files back to the server or write server-controlled content to writable local files, potentially including startup or scheduled-task files. This issue is fixed in version 3.7.6.