Directory traversal vulnerability in the read_long_names function in libelf/elf_begin.c in elfutils 0.152 and 0.161 allows remote attackers to write to arbitrary files to the root directory via a / (slash) in a crafted archive, as demonstrated using the ar program.

Affected: Ubuntu:14.04:LTS: elfutils

Alexander Cherepanov discovered that libelf1 incorrectly handled certain filesystem paths while extracting ar archives. An attacker could use this flaw to perform a directory traversal attack on the root directory if the process extracting the ar archive has write access to the root directory.