CVE-2018-12904 Privilege escalation in n/a

Medium 4.9 Published 27 Jun 2018 Updated 5 Aug 2024

Local attackers can escalate privileges or cause denial of service in nested virtualization environments due to missing CPL checks in the Linux kernel KVM module.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2018-12904?

CVE-2018-12904 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 27 Jun 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c in the Linux kernel before 4.17.2, when nested virtualization is used, local attackers could cause L1 KVM guests to VMEXIT, potentially allowing privilege escalations and denial of service attacks due to lack of checking of CPL.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-12904?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Canonical Ubuntu Linux, Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2018-12904?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2018-12904 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2018-12904 exists.

Public exploit code: 1 Exploit-DB entry.

All Canonical Ubuntu Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-12904, GHSA-vx6h-cqmq-qj84, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-12904.