rsync before 3.5.0 contains multiple command and argument injection vulnerabilities that allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands by supplying malicious input through several code paths, including the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG environment variable, daemon hooks, the rsync-ssl wrapper, and remote-shell command newline injection. Attackers can inject shell metacharacters or newline characters into unsanitized user-supplied values such as hostnames and hostspecs to execute arbitrary commands under the privileges of the rsync process or the invoking user.

rsync tbefore 3.5.0 contains a privilege confusion vulnerability in the name-converter subprocess uid/gid mapping that allows local attackers to cause transferred files to be owned by root by influencing name-converter responses to return empty values. When the name-converter subprocess returns an empty response for a uid or gid lookup, rsync incorrectly interprets it as a successful resolution to uid/gid 0 (root) rather than a lookup failure, and if the name-converter also signals fake super-user status, rsync proceeds with root ownership assignments for transferred files.

rsync 3.4.2 before 3.5.0 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows a remote sender to exhaust system resources by specifying the --zt short alias for --compress-threads, which bypasses the refuse options directive's string matching on long option names. Attackers can specify --zt=N with a large value to spawn an unbounded number of Zstandard worker threads on the receiver, exhausting available thread and memory resources.

rsync before 3.5.0 contains a symlink race condition vulnerability that allows local attackers to cause rsync to apply arbitrary ACLs or extended attributes to unintended files by substituting a symlink at a predictable destination path between the file write and the subsequent acl_set_file() or lsetxattr() call. Attackers can exploit this timing window to redirect ACL and xattr application through a crafted symlink to files outside the intended destination tree, potentially granting elevated permissions and enabling local privilege escalation.

rsync before 3.5.0 contains a symlink following vulnerability that allows local attackers to overwrite arbitrary files by placing a symlink at a predictable output path such as --log-file, --write-batch, or daemon-mode log and statistics paths. Attackers can exploit rsync's failure to reject symlinks during ancillary file writes to redirect output to arbitrary filesystem locations, achieving local privilege escalation on installations where rsync runs with elevated privileges such as setuid or privileged daemon configurations.

rsync before 3.5.0 contains a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability in the non-daemon receiver's destination directory handling that allows an attacker who can manipulate destination path parent components to redirect file writes to unintended locations. Attackers can substitute a symlink for a component of the destination path between the path resolution and chdir() call, causing the receiver's working directory to be established outside the intended destination tree so that subsequent relative-path file writes land in unintended filesystem locations.

rsync 3.0.0 before 3.5.0 contains an out-of-bounds write vulnerability that allows attackers to corrupt memory by triggering HLINK_BUMP processing on file entries with the FLAG_HLINKED flag set while the hard-link preservation option is inactive. Attackers can exploit the missing F_SUM field in the file_struct layout to access memory past the end of the allocated structure, corrupting adjacent heap or stack data.

rsync before 3.5.0 contains an arbitrary file write vulnerability that allows attackers to write files outside the intended destination tree by specifying an absolute path via --temp-dir or --link-dest options. The rename-confinement logic is bypassed when these options resolve to paths outside the destination tree, enabling attacker-controlled values to write files to arbitrary locations accessible to the rsync process.

rsync before 3.5.0 contains an algorithmic complexity vulnerability in the hash_search() function that allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service by delivering a carefully constructed file list. A sender can exploit the quadratic-time worst-case behavior in hash lookups to exhaust receiver CPU resources with a modest number of crafted entries, causing a sustained denial of service.

rsync 3.1.0 before 3.5.0 contains a signed integer overflow vulnerability in the I/O timeout implementation that allows attackers to permanently disable connection timeouts by injecting MSG_IO_TIMEOUT messages carrying non-positive (zero or negative) values. Attackers can craft malicious MSG_IO_TIMEOUT messages that cause the timeout variable to wrap to a non-positive value, preventing the timeout check from firing and enabling idle or stalled connections to hold daemon slots indefinitely, leading to resource exhaustion.