CVE-2019-19882

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: December 18, 2019 at 03:07 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 02:27 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorShadow

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%

Description

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

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

References (6)

x_refsource_MISCExploitThird Party Advisory
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/64836
x_refsource_MISCExploitThird Party Advisory
https://bugs.gentoo.org/702252
x_refsource_MISCPatchThird Party Advisory
https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/pull/199
x_refsource_MISCPatchThird Party Advisory
https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/17580
Vendor Advisoryx_refsource_GENTOO
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202008-09

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-732

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