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 would enable a neighborhood attacker to realize root privileges with out requiring consumer interplay.
The Qualys Risk Analysis Unit (TRU), which recognized and reported the failings early final month, mentioned they’re trivial to take advantage of, necessitating that customers transfer rapidly to use the fixes. The vulnerabilities are believed to have existed for the reason that introduction of interpreter help 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 achieve root privileges,” Ubuntu mentioned in an advisory, noting they’ve been addressed in model 3.8.
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 permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into operating the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH atmosphere variable
- CVE-2024-48991 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by profitable a race situation and tricking needrestart into operating their very own, pretend Python interpreter
- CVE-2024-48992 (CVSS rating: 7.8) – A vulnerability that permits native attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into operating the Ruby interpreter with an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB atmosphere variable
- CVE-2024-11003 (CVSS rating: 7.8) and CVE-2024-10224 (CVSS rating: 5.3) – Two vulnerabilities that permits a neighborhood attacker to execute arbitrary shell instructions as root by making the most of a difficulty 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 atmosphere variables for PYTHONPATH or RUBYLIB that would consequence within the execution of arbitrary code pointing to the menace actor’s atmosphere 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 newest patches, Ubuntu mentioned customers can disable interpreter scanners in needrestart the configuration file as a brief mitigation and make sure that the adjustments 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 foundation consumer,” Saeed Abbasi, product supervisor of TRU at Qualys, mentioned.
“An attacker exploiting these vulnerabilities might achieve root entry, compromising system integrity and safety.”
