A number of decade-old safety vulnerabilities have been disclosed within the needrestart bundle put in by default in Ubuntu Server (since model 21.04) that might permit a neighborhood attacker to achieve root privileges with out requiring person interplay.
The Qualys Risk Analysis Unit (TRU), which recognized and reported the issues early final month, mentioned they’re trivial to use, necessitating that customers transfer rapidly to use the fixes. The vulnerabilities are believed to have existed because the introduction of interpreter assist in needrestart 0.8, which was launched on April 27, 2014.
“These needrestart exploits permit Native Privilege Escalation (LPE) which implies that a neighborhood attacker is ready to achieve root privileges,” Ubuntu mentioned in an advisory, noting they’ve been addressed in model 3.8. “The vulnerabilities have an effect on Debian, Ubuntu, and different Linux distributions.”
Needrestart is a utility that scans a system to find out the providers that have to be restarted after making use of shared library updates in a fashion that avoids an entire system reboot.
The 5 flaws are listed beneath –
- CVE-2024-48990 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that enables native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into operating the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH setting variable
- CVE-2024-48991 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that enables native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by successful a race situation and tricking needrestart into operating their very own, pretend Python interpreter
- CVE-2024-48992 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that enables native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into operating the Ruby interpreter with an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB setting variable
- CVE-2024-11003 (CVSS rating: 7.8) and CVE-2024-10224 (CVSS rating: 5.3) – Two vulnerabilities that enables a neighborhood attacker to execute arbitrary shell instructions as root by making the most of a problem within the libmodule-scandeps-perl bundle (earlier than model 1.36)
Profitable exploitation of the aforementioned shortcomings may permit a neighborhood attacker to set specifically crafted setting variables for PYTHONPATH or RUBYLIB that might consequence within the execution of arbitrary code pointing to the risk actor’s setting when needrestart is run.
“In CVE-2024-10224, […] attacker-controlled enter may trigger the Module::ScanDeps Perl module to run arbitrary shell instructions by open()ing a ‘pesky pipe’ (equivalent 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. Nevertheless, 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 newest patches, Ubuntu mentioned customers can disable interpreter scanners in needrestart the configuration file as a short lived mitigation and be sure that the adjustments are reverted after the updates are utilized.
“These vulnerabilities within the needrestart utility permit native customers to escalate their privileges by executing arbitrary code throughout bundle installations or upgrades, the place needrestart is commonly run as the foundation person,” Saeed Abbasi, product supervisor of TRU at Qualys, mentioned.
“An attacker exploiting these vulnerabilities may achieve root entry, compromising system integrity and safety.”
