#VU100984 Code Injection in needrestart - CVE-2024-48992

Vulnerability identifier: #VU100984

Vulnerability risk: Low

CVSSv4.0: 5.9 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Clear]

CVE-ID: CVE-2024-48992

CWE-ID: CWE-94

Exploitation vector: Local

Exploit availability: No

Vulnerable software:
needrestart
Universal components / Libraries / Libraries used by multiple products

Vendor: liske (Thomas Liske)

Description

The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.

The vulnerability exists due to insecure handling of environment variables. A local user can trick the application into running the Ruby interpreter with an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB environment variable and execute arbitrary code on the system as root.

Mitigation
Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

needrestart: 0.1 - 3.7

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External links
https://github.com/liske/needrestart/commit/b5f25f6ec6e7dd0c5be249e4e45de4ee9ffe594f
https://www.qualys.com/2024/11/19/needrestart/needrestart.txt

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Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.