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 might enable a neighborhood attacker to realize root privileges with out requiring person interplay.
The Qualys Menace Analysis Unit (TRU), which recognized and reported the failings 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 for the reason that introduction of interpreter assist 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 acquire root privileges,” Ubuntu stated 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 companies that must be restarted after making use of shared library updates in a way that avoids a whole system reboot.
The 5 flaws are listed under –
- 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, faux 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 package deal (earlier than model 1.36)
Profitable exploitation of the aforementioned shortcomings might enable a neighborhood attacker to set specifically crafted setting variables for PYTHONPATH or RUBYLIB that might end result within the execution of arbitrary code pointing to the menace actor’s setting 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’ (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 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 modifications 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 usually run as the basis person,” Saeed Abbasi, product supervisor of TRU at Qualys, stated.
“An attacker exploiting these vulnerabilities might acquire root entry, compromising system integrity and safety.”