Improper Initialization - CVE-2017-14159
Published: September 5, 2017 / Updated: July 27, 2020
Vulnerability identifier: #VU31918
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 6 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2017-14159
CWE-ID: CWE-665
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local authenticated user to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.
slapd in OpenLDAP 2.4.45 and earlier creates a PID file after dropping privileges to a non-root account, which might allow local users to kill arbitrary processes by leveraging access to this non-root account for PID file modification before a root script executes a "kill `cat /pathname`" command, as demonstrated by openldap-initscript.
Affected software
openldap (Alpine package)
Splunk Enterprise
Splunk Enterprise
How to mitigate CVE-2017-14159
Install update from vendor's website.
openldap (Alpine package) - update to 2.4.46-r0
Splunk Enterprise - addressed in versions 9.1.6, 9.2.3, 9.3.1
Splunk Enterprise - addressed in versions 9.1.6, 9.2.3, 9.3.1