Privilege escalation can occur in the SUSE useradd.c code in useradd, as distributed in the SUSE shadow package through 4.2.1-27.9.1 for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (SLE-12) and through 4.5-5.39 for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 (SLE-15). Non-existing intermediate directories are created with mode 0777 during user creation. Given that they are world-writable, local attackers might use this for privilege escalation and other unspecified attacks. NOTE: this would affect non-SUSE users who took useradd.c code from a 2014-04-02 upstream pull request; however, no non-SUSE distribution is known to be affected.
The MITRE CVE dictionary describes this issue as:
Find out more about CVE-2018-16588 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.
NOTE: The following CVSS v3 metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
| CVSS3 Base Score | 4.4 |
|---|---|
| CVSS3 Base Metrics | CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
| Attack Vector | Local |
| Attack Complexity | Low |
| Privileges Required | None |
| User Interaction | Required |
| Scope | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | Low |
| Integrity Impact | Low |
| Availability Impact | None |
| Platform | Package | State |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Virtualization 4 | shadow-utils | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | shadow-utils | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | shadow-utils | Not affected |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | shadow-utils | Not affected |
Vulmon