Samba contains an RPC endpoint emulating the Windows registry service API. One of the requests, "winreg_SaveKey", is susceptible to a path/symlink traversal vulnerability. Unprivileged users can use it to create a new registry hive file anywhere they have unix permissions to create a new file within a Samba share. If they are able to create symlinks on a Samba share, they can create a new registry hive file anywhere they have write access, even outside a Samba share definition.
Note - existing share restrictions such as "read only" or share ACLs do *not* prevent new registry hive files being written to the filesystem. A file may be written under any share definition wherever the user has unix permissions to create a file.
Existing files cannot be overwritten using this vulnerability, only new registry hive files can be created, however the presence of existing files with a specific name can be detected.
Samba writes or detects the file as the authenticated user, not as root.
