CVE-2020-8903

Priviged Escalation in Google Cloud Platform's Guest-OSLogin

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: June 22, 2020 at 01:45 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 03:27 AM UTC
2 products affected across 2 vendorsLeapGuest Oslogin

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%

Description

A vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform's guest-oslogin versions between 20190304 and 20200507 allows a user that is only granted the role "roles/compute.osLogin" to escalate privileges to root. Using their membership to the "adm" group, users with this role are able to read the DHCP XID from the systemd journal. Using the DHCP XID, it is then possible to set the IP address and hostname of the instance to any value, which is then stored in /etc/hosts. An attacker can then point metadata.google.internal to an arbitrary IP address and impersonate the GCE metadata server which make it is possible to instruct the OS Login PAM module to grant administrative privileges. All images created after 2020-May-07 (20200507) are fixed, and if you cannot update, we recommend you edit /etc/group/security.conf and remove the "adm" user from the OS Login entry.

Affected

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

20190304 ≤ v < 2020050720190304.00 ≤ v ≤ 20200507.0020190304
Vendor states this is fixed in 20200507 (unaffected)

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-276

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