Code Injection in needrestart - CVE-2024-48990
Published: November 27, 2024 / Updated: January 4, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU100982
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:A/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2024-48990
CWE-ID: CWE-94
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
The vulnerability is being exploited in the wild
Vendor: liske (Thomas Liske)
Affected software:
needrestart
needrestart
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.
The vulnerability exists due to insecure handling of environment variables. A local user can trick the application into running the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH environment variable and execute arbitrary code on the system as root.
How to mitigate CVE-2024-48990
Install updates from vendor's website.