CVE-2019-19882

published 2019-12-18

CVE-2019-19882: shadow 4.8, in certain circumstances affecting at least Gentoo, Arch Linux, and Void Linux, allows local users to obtain root access because setuid programs…

Priority P3 40 high 7.8 CVSS 3.1

AV L AC L PR L UI N S U C H I H A H

shadow 4.8, in certain circumstances affecting at least Gentoo, Arch Linux, and Void Linux, allows local users to obtain root access because setuid programs are misconfigured. Specifically, this affects shadow 4.8 when compiled using --with-libpam but without explicitly passing --disable-account-tools-setuid, and without a PAM configuration suitable for use with setuid account management tools. This combination leads to account management tools (groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, useradd, userdel, usermod) that can easily be used by unprivileged local users to escalate privileges to root in multiple ways. This issue became much more relevant in approximately December 2019 when an unrelated bug was fixed (i.e., the chmod calls to suidusbins were fixed in the upstream Makefile which is now included in the release version 4.8).

Affected

6 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
debian	shadow	< shadow 1:4.8.1-1 (bookworm)	shadow 1:4.8.1-1 (bookworm)
shadow_project	shadow	—	—
shadow_project	shadow	>= 0 < 1:4.8.1-1	1:4.8.1-1
shadow_project	shadow	>= 0 < 1:4.8.1-1	1:4.8.1-1
shadow_project	shadow	>= 0 < 1:4.8.1-1	1:4.8.1-1
shadow_project	shadow	>= 0 < 1:4.8.1-1	1:4.8.1-1

CVSS provenance

nvd v3.1 7.8 HIGH CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

nvd v2.0 6.9 MEDIUM AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

osv 7.8 HIGH

vendor_debian 7.8 LOW

vendor_redhat 7.8 HIGH

Stop checking back — get the weekly exploitation signal.

Every Monday: what got weaponized or added to CISA KEV in the last seven days — each CVE cross-linked to its PoC, Nuclei template, and detection rule. Free, one email a week, unsubscribe in one click.

CWE-732 CWE-592