CVE-2019-15790 Apport reads PID files with elevated privileges
An unprivileged user can read privileged process information via PID recycling to obtain ASLR offsets, aiding exploitation of other vulnerabilities.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2019-15790?
CVE-2019-15790 is a low-severity vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 27 Apr 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Apport reads and writes information on a crashed process to /proc/pid with elevated privileges. Apport then determines which user the crashed process belongs to by reading /proc/pid through get_pid_info() in data/apport. An unprivileged user could exploit this to read information about a privileged running process by exploiting PID recycling. This information could then be used to obtain ASLR offsets for a process with an existing memory corruption vulnerability. The initial fix introduced regressions in the Python Apport library due to a missing argument in Report.add_proc_environ in apport/report.py. It also caused an autopkgtest failure when reading /proc/pid and with Python 2 compatibility by reading /proc maps. The initial and subsequent regression fixes are in 2.20.11-0ubuntu16, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.6, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.12, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.22 and 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.29+esm3.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-15790?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Apport Project Apport, Canonical Ubuntu Linux.
How do I fix CVE-2019-15790?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2019-15790 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-15790 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Canonical Ubuntu Linux
Sources
Also known as GHSA-mv59-w8cf-g9q7, UBUNTU-CVE-2019-15790.