CVE-2020-8833

MEDIUM

Apport <2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23 - Privilege Escalation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

Time-of-check Time-of-use Race Condition vulnerability on crash report ownership change in Apport allows for a possible privilege escalation opportunity. If fs.protected_symlinks is disabled, this can be exploited between the os.open and os.chown calls when the Apport cron script clears out crash files of size 0. A symlink with the same name as the deleted file can then be created upon which chown will be called, changing the file owner to root. Fixed in versions 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.23, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.14, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.8 and 2.20.11-0ubuntu22.

References (3)

Core 3
Core References
Third Party Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4315-1/
Exploit, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/1862933
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory x_refsource_ubuntu
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4315-2/

Scores

CVSS v3 5.6
EPSS 0.0003
EPSS Percentile 10.3%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Details

CWE
CWE-367
Status published
Products (5)
apport_project/apport
canonical/ubuntu_linux 14.04
canonical/ubuntu_linux 16.04
canonical/ubuntu_linux 18.04
canonical/ubuntu_linux 19.10
Published Apr 22, 2020
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026