Privilege escalation in procps - CVE-2018-1122

 

Privilege escalation in procps - CVE-2018-1122

Published: May 22, 2018 / Updated: June 17, 2021


Vulnerability identifier: #VU12975
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:P/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2018-1122
CWE-ID: CWE-264
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability: Public exploit is available
Vendor: procps-ng
Affected software:
procps

Detailed vulnerability description

The vulnerability allows a local attacker to gain elevated privileges on the target system.

The weakness exists due to top reads its configuration file from the current working directory, without any security check, if the HOME environment variable is unset or empty. A local attacker can exploit one of several vulnerabilities in top's config_file() function, execute top in /tmp (for example) and gain elevated privileges.

How to mitigate CVE-2018-1122

Update to version 3.3.15.

Sources