Vulnerability in Phusion Passenger

CVE-2018-12029

A race condition in the nginx module in Phusion Passenger 3.x through 5.x before 5.3.2 allows local escalation of privileges when a non-standard passenger_instance_registry_dir with insufficiently strict permissions is configured. Replacing a file with a symlink after the file was created, but before it was chowned, leads to the target of the link being chowned via the path. Targeting sensitive files such as root's crontab file allows privilege escalation.

Vulnerability class: Race Condition

EPSS: 0.003 (19.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.0 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

  • cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_MISC, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory)
  • cve@mitre.org (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_GENTOO)
  • cve@mitre.org (Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
  • cve@mitre.org (mailing-list, x_refsource_MLIST, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-12029?
CVE-2018-12029 is a high-severity vulnerability in Phusion Passenger, classified under Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (Race Condition). CVSS score: 7.0/10. Published 2018-06-17.
How severe is CVE-2018-12029?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.0 out of 10.
Is CVE-2018-12029 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.