Mandriva Linux Security Advisory 2011-096

Mandriva Linux Security Advisory 2011-096 – The is_cgi method in CGIHTTPServer.py in the CGIHTTPServer module in Python 2.5, 2.6, and 3.0 allows remote attackers to read script source code via an HTTP GET request that lacks a / character at the beginning of the URI. A flaw was found in the Python urllib and urllib2 libraries where they would not differentiate between different target URLs when handling automatic redirects. This caused Python applications using these modules to follow any new URL that they understood, including the file:// URL type. This could allow a remote server to force a local Python application to read a local file instead of the remote one, possibly exposing local files that were not meant to be exposed.

Source: Mandriva Linux Security Advisory 2011-096