Vulnerability in Shadow Project
CVE-2019-19882
shadow 4.8, in certain circumstances affecting at least Gentoo, Arch Linux, and Void Linux, allows local users to obtain root access because setuid programs are misconfigured. Specifically, this affects shadow 4.8 when compiled using --with-libpam but without explicitly passing --disable-account-tools-setuid, and without a PAM configuration suitable for use with setuid account management tools. This combination leads to account management tools (groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, useradd, userdel, usermod) that can easily be used by unprivileged local users to escalate privileges to root in multiple ways. This issue became much more relevant in approximately December 2019 when an unrelated bug was fixed (i.e., the chmod calls to suidusbins were fixed in the upstream Makefile which is now included in the release version 4.8).
EPSS: 0.005 (40.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.
Affected products
- Shadow_project Shadow — versions 4.8
- N/a — versions n/a
Weakness classification (CWE)
Public proof-of-concept exploits
References
- cve@mitre.org (Patch, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (Patch, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (Exploit, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (Exploit, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (Patch, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (vendor-advisory, x_refsource_GENTOO)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2019-19882?
- CVE-2019-19882 is a high-severity vulnerability in Shadow Project, classified under Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2019-12-18.
- How severe is CVE-2019-19882?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.
- Is CVE-2019-19882 known to be exploited?
- 10 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.