Privilege escalation in Apport Project

CVE-2019-15790

Apport reads and writes information on a crashed process to /proc/pid with elevated privileges. Apport then determines which user the crashed process belongs to by reading /proc/pid through get_pid_info() in data/apport. An unprivileged user could exploit this to read information about a privileged running process by exploiting PID recycling. This information could then be used to obtain ASLR offsets for a process with an existing memory corruption vulnerability. The initial fix introduced regressions in the Python Apport library due to a missing argument in Report.add_proc_environ in apport/report.py. It also caused an autopkgtest failure when reading /proc/pid and with Python 2 compatibility by reading /proc maps. The initial and subsequent regression fixes are in 2.20.11-0ubuntu16, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.6, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.12, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.22 and 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.29+esm3.

EPSS: 0.005 (41.4th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 2.8 (Low). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-15790?
CVE-2019-15790 is a low-severity vulnerability in Apport Project, classified under CWE-250. CVSS score: 2.8/10. Published 2020-04-28.
How severe is CVE-2019-15790?
Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 2.8 out of 10.
Is CVE-2019-15790 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.