CVE-2019-18634

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Last Modified: UTC

Important Important Impact What does this mean?
7.8 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A flaw was found in the Sudo application when the ’pwfeedback' option is set to true on the sudoers file. An authenticated user can use this vulnerability to trigger a stack-based buffer overflow under certain conditions even without Sudo privileges. The buffer overflow may allow an attacker to expose or corrupt memory information, crash the Sudo application, or possibly inject code to be run as a root user.

Statement

This flaw can only be exploited if the option pwfeedback is enabled in sudo configuration. This option is not enabled by default in any version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The sudo packages distributed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions are compiled using gcc's stack-protector feature. The "Stack Smashing Protection" may help mitigate code execution attacks for this flaw. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is not affected as it doesn't include the commit which introduced the vulnerability.

Mitigation

Please follow the steps bellow as mitigation:

1. Check the default properties set for sudo by running:

    $ sudo -l
    [sudo] password for user:
    Matching Defaults entries for users on localhost:
        !visiblepw, pwfeedback, always_set_home, match_group_by_gid, always_query_group_plugin, env_reset, env_keep="COLORS DISPLAY HOSTNAME HISTSIZE KDEDIR LS_COLORS",
    env_keep+="MAIL PS1 PS2 QTDIR USERNAME LANG LC_ADDRESS LC_CTYPE", env_keep+="LC_COLLATE LC_IDENTIFICATION
        LC_MEASUREMENT LC_MESSAGES", env_keep+="LC_MONETARY LC_NAME LC_NUMERIC LC_PAPER LC_TELEPHONE", env_keep+="LC_TIME LC_ALL LANGUAGE LINGUAS _XKB_CHARSET XAUTHORITY", secure_path=/sbin\:/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin

2. If `pwfeedback` is enabled as shown above, edit your `/etc/sudoers` file, changing the line:

    Defaults pwfeedback

    To:

    Defaults !pwfeedback

    This will disable visual feedback on password typing, making sure the attack is not possible anymore.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-18634

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-18634

Content from www.sudo.ws is not included.https://www.sudo.ws/alerts/pwfeedback.html

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 sudo Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 sudo Fixed RHSA-2020:0726
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 sudo Fixed RHSA-2020:0540
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 sudo Fixed RHSA-2020:0487
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Update Services for SAP Solutions sudo Fixed RHSA-2020:0509
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 7.8 7.8
Attack Vector Local Local
Attack Complexity Low Low
Privileges Required Low Low
User Interaction None None
Scope Unchanged Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact High High
Integrity Impact High High
Availability Impact High High

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

NVD CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.