Privilege escalation in Squid-Cache Squid

CVE-2019-12522

An issue was discovered in Squid through 4.7. When Squid is run as root, it spawns its child processes as a lesser user, by default the user nobody. This is done via the leave_suid call. leave_suid leaves the Saved UID as 0. This makes it trivial for an attacker who has compromised the child process to escalate their privileges back to root.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

EPSS: 0.003 (27.0th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-12522?
CVE-2019-12522 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Squid-Cache Squid, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 4.5/10. Published 2020-04-15.
How severe is CVE-2019-12522?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.5 out of 10.