CVE-2023-31438 — An issue was discovered in systemd 253

An issue was discovered in systemd 253. An attacker can truncate a sealed log file and then resume log sealing such that checking the integrity shows no error, despite modifications. NOTE: the vendor reportedly sent "a reply denying that any of the finding was a security vul

01What is this vulnerability?

An issue was discovered in systemd 253. An attacker can truncate a sealed log file and then resume log sealing such that checking the integrity shows no error, despite modifications. NOTE: the vendor reportedly sent "a reply denying that any of the finding was a security vulnerability."

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: 2023-06-13T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-02T14:53:30.747Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases
• github.com — https://github.com/kastel-security/Journald/blob/main/journald-publication.pdf
• github.com — https://github.com/kastel-security/Journald
• github.com — https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/28886