Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls in shadow - CVE-2019-19882
Published: December 20, 2019 / Updated: January 29, 2020
Vulnerability identifier: #VU23780
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 8.5 [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]
CVE-ID: CVE-2019-19882
CWE-ID: CWE-264
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.
The vulnerability exists due to missconfigured setuid programs in shadow 4.8 when compiled using --with-libpam but without explicitly passing --disable-account-tools-setuid, and without a PAM configuration suitable for use with setuid account management tools.. A local unprivileged user can leverage groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, useradd, userdel, or usermod management tools to escalate privileges on the system to root.
The issue affects at least Gentoo, Arch Linux, and Void Linux.
Affected software
shadow
Arch Linux
Gentoo Linux
Arch Linux
Gentoo Linux
How to mitigate CVE-2019-19882
Install update from vendor's website.
shadow - update to 4.8.1