CVE-2019-13272

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2019-13272  

Impact: Critical Public Date: 2019-07-16 CWE: CWE-271 Bugzilla: 1730895: CVE-2019-13272 kernel: broken permission and object lifetime handling for PTRACE_TRACEME In the Linux kernel before 5.1.17, ptrace_link in kernel/ptrace.c mishandles the recording of the credentials of a process that wants to create a ptrace relationship, which allows local users to obtain root access by leveraging certain scenarios with a parent-child process relationship, where a parent drops privileges and calls execve (potentially allowing control by an attacker). One contributing factor is an object lifetime issue (which can also cause a panic). Another contributing factor is incorrect marking of a ptrace relationship as privileged, which is exploitable through (for example) Polkit's pkexec helper with PTRACE_TRACEME.

The MITRE CVE dictionary describes this issue as:

In the Linux kernel before 5.1.17, ptrace_link in kernel/ptrace.c mishandles the recording of the credentials of a process that wants to create a ptrace relationship, which allows local users to obtain root access by leveraging certain scenarios with a parent-child process relationship, where a parent drops privileges and calls execve (potentially allowing control by an attacker). One contributing factor is an object lifetime issue (which can also cause a panic). Another contributing factor is incorrect marking of a ptrace relationship as privileged, which is exploitable through (for example) Polkit's pkexec helper with PTRACE_TRACEME.

Find out more about CVE-2019-13272 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.

CVSS v3 metrics

NOTE: The following CVSS v3 metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS3 Base Score 7.8
CVSS3 Base Metrics CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector Local
Attack Complexity High
Privileges Required Low
User Interaction None
Scope Changed
Confidentiality High
Integrity Impact High
Availability Impact High

Affected Packages State

Platform Package State
Red Hat Virtualization 4 kernel Under investigation
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel-rt Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel-rt Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-alt Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-rt Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel Under investigation
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel Under investigation