Executive Summary

The CVE-1999-1091 vulnerability in the UNIX news readers tin and rtin allows a local attacker to exploit insecure permissions on /tmp/.tin_log by creating a symlink to a writable file. Following the symlink lets the attacker modify file permissions, potentially enabling privilege escalation or unauthorized data tampering. The flaw is not currently listed in CISA KEV.

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Authoritative CVE Metadata - CVSS Base Score: 5.0 (MEDIUM) - Published: 2002-01-15T05:00:00.000 - Last Modified: 2026-09-25T20:10:00.123

Original Description: UNIX news readers tin and rtin create the /tmp/.tin_log file with insecure permissions and follow symlinks, which allows attackers to modify the permissions of files writable by the user via a symlink attack.

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