CVE-2018-7169

shadow-utils: newgidmap allows unprivileged user to drop supplementary groups potentially allowing privilege escalation

Published Feb 15, 2018 CVSS 3.0 · 5.3 Medium EPSS 1.6% KEV · Not listed
Description
An issue was discovered in shadow 4.5. newgidmap (in shadow-utils) is setuid and allows an unprivileged user to be placed in a user namespace where setgroups(2) is permitted. This allows an attacker to remove themselves from a supplementary group, which may allow access to certain filesystem paths if the administrator has used "group blacklisting" (e.g., chmod g-rwx) to restrict access to paths. This flaw effectively reverts a security feature in the kernel (in particular, the /proc/self/setgroups knob) to prevent this sort of privilege escalation.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2018-18911 An issue was discovered in shadow 4.5. newgidmap (in shadow-utils) is setuid and allows an unprivileged user to be placed in a user namespace where setgroups(2) is permitted. This allows an attacker to remove themselves from a supplementary group, which may allow access to certain filesystem paths if the administrator has used "group blacklisting" (e.g., chmod g-rwx) to restrict access to paths. This flaw effectively reverts a security feature in the kernel (in particular, the /proc/self/setgroups knob) to prevent this sort of privilege escalation.
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-5254-1 shadow vulnerabilities
History

No history.

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
mitre
Published
Updated
Aug 5, 2024, 6:24 AM
Reserved
Feb 15, 2018, 12:00 AM
Status
Modified
Published
Feb 15, 2018, 8:29 PM
Modified
Jun 17, 2026, 2:02 AM
Severity
Moderate
Public date
Nov 14, 2017, 12:00 AM