Resource exhaustion in Systemd Project

CVE-2022-45873

systemd 250 and 251 allows local users to achieve a systemd-coredump deadlock by triggering a crash that has a long backtrace. This occurs in parse_elf_object in shared/elf-util.c. The exploitation methodology is to crash a binary calling the same function recursively, and put it in a deeply nested directory to make its backtrace large enough to cause the deadlock. This must be done 16 times when MaxConnections=16 is set for the systemd/units/systemd-coredump.socket file.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

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 (16.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 17th percentile — 16.6% 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-2022-45873: held from 0.003 to 0.003.

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

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2022-45873?
CVE-2022-45873 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Systemd Project, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2022-11-23.
How severe is CVE-2022-45873?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.