CVE-2018-4180

Description

It was discovered that CUPS allows non-root users to pass environment variables to CUPS backends. Affected backends use attacker-controlled environment variables without proper sanitization. A local attacker, who is part of one of the groups specified in the SystemGroups directive, could use the cupsctl binary to set SetEnv and PassEnv directives and potentially controls the flow of the affected backend, resulting in some cases in arbitrary code execution with root privileges.

Mitigation

Do not add untrusted users to sys and root groups.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert: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 Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score6.77.8N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredHighLowN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityHighHighN/A
Integrity ImpactHighHighN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Access Control

Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism; Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

An attacker could potentially modify the state in malicious ways. If the state is related to the privileges or level of authentication that the user has, then state modification might allow the user to bypass authentication or elevate privileges.

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Application Data

The state variables may contain sensitive information that should not be known by the client.

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

By modifying state variables, the attacker could violate the application's expectations for the contents of the state, leading to a denial of service due to an unexpected error condition.

Frequently Asked Questions

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