Rsync versions before 3.4.3 contain an off-by-one out-of-bounds stack write vulnerability in the establish_proxy_connection() function in socket.c that allows network attackers to corrupt stack memory by sending a malformed HTTP proxy response. Attackers can exploit this by positioning themselves between the client and proxy or controlling the proxy server to send a response line of 1023 or more bytes without a newline terminator, causing a null byte to be written to an out-of-bounds stack address when the RSYNC_PROXY environment variable is set.

Rsync version 3.4.2 and prior contain symlink race condition vulnerabilities in path-based system calls including chmod, lchown, utimes, rename, unlink, mkdir, symlink, mknod, link, rmdir, and lstat that allow local attackers to redirect operations to files outside the exported rsync module. Attackers with local filesystem access can exploit the timing window between path resolution and syscall execution by swapping symlinks to apply sender-supplied permissions, ownership, timestamps, or filenames to arbitrary files outside the intended module boundary on rsync daemons configured with 'use chroot = no'.

Rsync version 3.4.2 and prior contain an authorization bypass vulnerability in the rsync daemon's hostname-based access control list enforcement when configured with chroot. Attackers can bypass hostname-based deny rules by controlling the PTR record for their source IP address, allowing connections from hostnames that administrators intended to deny when reverse DNS resolution fails and defaults to UNKNOWN.

Rsync version 3.4.2 and prior contain an integer overflow vulnerability in the compressed-token decoder where a 32-bit signed counter is not checked for overflow, allowing a malicious sender to trigger an overflow that causes the receiver process to read and return data from outside the intended buffer bounds. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to disclose process memory contents including environment variables, passwords, heap and stack data, and library memory pointers, significantly reducing ASLR effectiveness and facilitating further exploitation.

Rsync versions before 3.4.3 contain a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition in daemon file handling that allows attackers to redirect file writes outside intended directories by replacing parent directory components with symbolic links. Attackers with write access to a module path can exploit this race condition to create or overwrite arbitrary files, potentially modifying sensitive system files and achieving privilege escalation when the daemon runs with elevated privileges. This vulnerability can only be triggered if the chroot setting is false.

Rsync version 3.4.2 and prior contain a receiver-side out-of-bounds array read vulnerability in recv_files() in receiver.c that allows a malicious rsync server to crash the rsync client process. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability by setting CF_INC_RECURSE in compatibility flags and sending a specially crafted file list where the first sorted entry is not the leading dot directory, followed by a transfer record with ndx=0 and an iflag word without ITEM_TRANSFER, causing the receiver to read 8 bytes before the allocated pointer array and dereference an invalid pointer at an unmapped address, resulting in a deterministic SIGSEGV crash of the rsync client.

In rsync 3.0.1 through 3.4.1, receive_xattr relies on an untrusted length value during a qsort call, leading to a receiver use-after-free. The victim must run rsync with -X (aka --xattrs). On Linux, many (but not all) common configurations are vulnerable. Non-Linux platforms are more widely vulnerable.