CVE-2023-26604

Publication date 3 March 2023

Last updated 24 July 2024


Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

7.8 · High

Score breakdown

systemd before 247 does not adequately block local privilege escalation for some Sudo configurations, e.g., plausible sudoers files in which the "systemctl status" command may be executed. Specifically, systemd does not set LESSSECURE to 1, and thus other programs may be launched from the less program. This presents a substantial security risk when running systemctl from Sudo, because less executes as root when the terminal size is too small to show the complete systemctl output.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
systemd 24.10 oracular
Not affected
24.04 LTS noble
Not affected
23.10 mantic
Not affected
23.04 lunar
Not affected
22.10 kinetic
Not affected
22.04 LTS jammy
Not affected
20.04 LTS focal
Vulnerable
18.04 LTS bionic
Vulnerable
16.04 LTS xenial
Needs evaluation
14.04 LTS trusty Ignored end of ESM support, was needs-triage

Notes


rodrigo-zaiden

on https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5666 upstream claims this is not a vulnerability. upstream feature SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE implemented in systemd version 247.


mdeslaur

This is only an issue if an administrator configured systemctl access using sudo instead of using policykit, which is an unlikely scenario. Per Red Hat bug, systemctl commands that use the pager can run unprivileged. Setting priority to "low".

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package Patch details
systemd

Severity score breakdown

Parameter Value
Base score 7.8 · High
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality High
Integrity impact High
Availability impact High
Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H