CVE-2019-13272

HIGH severity · CVSS 7.8 · actively exploited (CISA KEV)

7.8CVSS HIGH ● exploited

🔴 Actively exploited in the wild (CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities). Added to KEV 2021-12-10. US federal agencies must patch by 2022-06-10.

Summary

In the Linux kernel before 5.1.17, ptrace_link in kernel/ptrace.c mishandles the recording of the credentials of a process that wants to create a ptrace relationship, which allows local users to obtain root access by leveraging certain scenarios with a parent-child process relationship, where a parent drops privileges and calls execve (potentially allowing control by an attacker). One contributing factor is an object lifetime issue (which can also cause a panic). Another contributing factor is incorrect marking of a ptrace relationship as privileged, which is exploitable through (for example) Polkit's pkexec helper with PTRACE_TRACEME. NOTE: SELinux deny_ptrace might be a usable workaround in some environments.

Impact & exploitability

Attack vectorLocal

Attack complexityLow

Privileges requiredLow

User interactionNone

Confidentiality impactHigh

Integrity impactHigh

Availability impactHigh

Exploit probability (EPSS)80%

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

Affected products we track (1)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Recommendation

This vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild — patch affected products urgently. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.

CVE-2019-13272

Summary

Impact & exploitability

Affected products we track (1)

Recommendation

Additional information