CVE-2018-16588 — Privilege escalation can occur in the SUSE useradd

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

01What is this vulnerability?

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…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2018-09-26T22:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-05T10:24:32.999Z

09References

• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2018-09/msg00073.html