Vulnerability in GNOME Gnome-Shell

CVE-2021-3982

Linux distributions using CAP_SYS_NICE for gnome-shell may be exposed to a privilege escalation issue. An attacker, with low privilege permissions, may take advantage of the way CAP_SYS_NICE is currently implemented and eventually load code to increase its process scheduler priority leading to possible DoS of other services running in the same machine.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (19.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 19th percentile — 19.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2021-3982: held from 0.003 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • GNOME Gnome-Shell
  • Gnome-Shell — versions gnome-shell downstream versions using CAP_SYS_NICE

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-3982?
CVE-2021-3982 is a medium-severity vulnerability in GNOME Gnome-Shell, classified under Improper Check for Dropped Privileges. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2022-04-29.
How severe is CVE-2021-3982?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.