A number of decade-old safety vulnerabilities have been disclosed within the needrestart package deal put in by default in Ubuntu Server (since model 21.04) that would enable a neighborhood attacker to achieve root privileges with out requiring consumer interplay.
The Qualys Risk Analysis Unit (TRU), which recognized and reported the issues early final month, stated they’re trivial to use, necessitating that customers transfer shortly to use the fixes. The vulnerabilities are believed to have existed because the introduction of interpreter help in needrestart 0.8, which was launched on April 27, 2014.
“These needrestart exploits enable Native Privilege Escalation (LPE) which implies that a neighborhood attacker is ready to achieve root privileges,” Ubuntu stated in an advisory, noting they’ve been addressed in model 3.8.
Needrestart is a utility that scans a system to find out the companies that have to be restarted after making use of shared library updates in a fashion that avoids a whole system reboot.
The 5 flaws are listed beneath –
- CVE-2024-48990 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into working the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH surroundings variable
- CVE-2024-48991 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by successful a race situation and tricking needrestart into working their very own, faux Python interpreter
- CVE-2024-48992 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into working the Ruby interpreter with an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB surroundings variable
- CVE-2024-11003 (CVSS rating: 7.8) and CVE-2024-10224 (CVSS rating: 5.3) – Two vulnerabilities that permits a neighborhood attacker to execute arbitrary shell instructions as root by making the most of a difficulty within the libmodule-scandeps-perl package deal (earlier than model 1.36)
Profitable exploitation of the aforementioned shortcomings might enable a neighborhood attacker to set specifically crafted surroundings variables for PYTHONPATH or RUBYLIB that would outcome within the execution of arbitrary code pointing to the risk actor’s surroundings when needrestart is run.
“In CVE-2024-10224, […] attacker-controlled enter might trigger the Module::ScanDeps Perl module to run arbitrary shell instructions by open()ing a ‘pesky pipe’ (akin to by passing ‘instructions|’ as a filename) or by passing arbitrary strings to eval(),” Ubuntu famous.
“By itself, this isn’t sufficient for native privilege escalation. Nonetheless, in CVE-2024-11003 needrestart passes attacker-controlled enter (filenames) to Module::ScanDeps and triggers CVE-2024-10224 with root privilege. The repair for CVE-2024-11003 removes needrestart’s dependency on Module::ScanDeps.”
Whereas it is extremely suggested to obtain the most recent patches, Ubuntu stated customers can disable interpreter scanners in needrestart the configuration file as a short lived mitigation and be certain that the adjustments are reverted after the updates are utilized.
“These vulnerabilities within the needrestart utility enable native customers to escalate their privileges by executing arbitrary code throughout package deal installations or upgrades, the place needrestart is commonly run as the foundation consumer,” Saeed Abbasi, product supervisor of TRU at Qualys, stated.
“An attacker exploiting these vulnerabilities might achieve root entry, compromising system integrity and safety.”