The GNOME Display Manager (GDM) provides the graphical login screen, shown
shortly after boot up, log out, and when user-switching.
A race condition flaw was found in the way GDM handled the cache
directories used to store users' dmrc and face icon files. A local attacker
could use this flaw to trick GDM into changing the ownership of an
arbitrary file via a symbolic link attack, allowing them to escalate their
privileges. (CVE-2011-0727)
We would like to thank Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team for
reporting this issue.